WHY  WOMEN  ARE  SO 


By 
MARY  ROBERTS  COOLIDGE,  Ph.D. 

Author  of  Chinese  Immigration,  Almshouse  Women,  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1912 


.  OF 


COPYRIGHT,  1912, 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  October,  1912 


TMC   OOIMH    »    *OOtN    CO. 
«AMW»Y.   N.   J. 


TO 

B.  C. 

AND   OTHER   NEW  MEN 

WHO   SET  HUMAN    QUALITY  ABOVE  FEMININITY 
IN  WOMEN 


2126235 


THE  HYPOTHESIS 

THESE  chapters  are  neither  a  defense  nor  an 
arraignment  of  womankind;  they  are,  rather,  a 
first-hand  study  of  the  ordinary,  orthodox,  middle- 
class  women  who  have  constituted  the  domestic 
type  for  more  than  a  century;  the  exotic  great  lady 
and  the  morbid  woman  with  a  grievance  have  alike 
been  omitted.  They  try  to  answer  the  query: 
why  are  women  so?  Is  the  characteristic  be- 
havior which  is  called  feminine  an  inalienable 
quality  or  merely  an  attitude  of  mind  produced 
by  the  coercive  social  habits  of  past  times? 

As  a  working  hypothesis  it  is  assumed  that  the 
women  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  America  were 
for  the  most  part  what  men  expected  them  to  be; 
modified  only  by  the  disintegrating,  and  at  the 
same  time  reconstructive,  forces  of  modern  soci- 
ety. In  other  words,  sex  traditions  rather  than 
innate  sex  character  have  produced  what  is  called 
"  feminine  "  as  distinguished  from  womanly  be- 
havior. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

THE  HYPOTHESIS v 


SECTION  I 
THE  DOMESTIC  TRADITIONS 

CHAPTER 

I.  THE   CONVENTIONS   OF   GIRLHOOD  j 

II.  THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 20 

III.  THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 42 

IV.  DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 65 

SECTION  II 
THE    EFFECT   UPON    WOMEN 

V.  THE    FEMININE    TEMPERAMENT        ....      89 

VI.  BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 108 

VII.  THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 130 

VIII.  CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 148 

IX.  THE   VIRTUES   OF   SUBSERVIENCE        .        .        .        .169 

SECTION  III 
SOME    EXCEPTIONS 

X.     THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 191 

XI.    THE  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY    .        .        .  219 

XII.     WOMEN   INSURGENTS 243 

XIII.    LITERARY  AMATFURS     .  ....  271 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

SECTION  IV 
FROM  FEMININITY  TO  WOMANHOOD 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIV.     THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY    ....    297 

XV.     FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 318 

XVI.    THE  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP  .       .       .       .344 


SECTION  I 
THE  DOMESTIC  TRADITIONS 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

"  Creatures  of  circumstance  who  waited  to  be  fallen  in  love 
with.  .  .  .  We  stood  and  waited — on  approval.  And  then  came 
life  itself  and  tore  our  mother's  theories  to  tatters." — CICELY 
HAMILTON. 

"  The  chief  element  of  a  good  time  ...  as  these  countless  rich 
young  women  judge  it,  are  a  petty  eventfulness,  laughter,  and 
to  feel  you  are  looking  well  and  attracting  attention.  Shopping 
is  one  of  its  chief  joys.  .  .  .  My  cousins  were  always  getting  and 
giving,  my  uncle  caressed  them  with  parcels  and  checks.  .  .  . 
So  far  as  marriage  went,  the  married  state  seemed  at  once  very 
attractive  and  dreadfully  serious  to  them,  composed  in  equal 
measure  of  becoming  important  and  becoming  old.  I  don't  know 
what  they  thought  about  children.  I  doubt  if  they  thought  about 
them  at  all." — H.  G.  WELLS. 

"  Fine  girls  sittin'  like  shopkeepers  behind  their  goods,  waitin' 
and  waitin'  and  waitin'.  .  .  ." — OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 

FEMININE  life  in  the  middle  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, and  to  a  degree  now  almost  inconceivable, 
was  permeated  with  the  current  traditions  of  what 
good  women  had  been,  and  by  the  assumption  that 
these  stood  for  the  pattern  of  what  they  should 
still  be.  From  the  moment  of  birth  their  sex  was 
outwardly  marked  by  the  color  of  their  ribbons, 
which  became  the  embodiment,  as  it  were,  of  their 
discreet  and  pallid  characteristics.  Throughout 


the  weeks  that  followed  the  mother  watched  im- 
patiently to  see  whether  the  baby's  hair  would  be 
curly — "  for  curly  hair  is  so  pretty  in  a  girl,  you 
know."  By  the  time  the  infant  could  walk  and 
talk,  she  had  learned  that  there  were  things  taboo 
for  her  which  were  perfectly  proper  for  the  little 
male  creatures  of  her  kind :  she  might  not  yell,  nor 
romp,  nor  scuffle,  nor,  in  short,  "  be  a  tomboy," 
because  it  was  not  nice  for  a  little  girl. 

While  the  little  boys  of  her  age  were  gradually 
emancipated  from  lingerie  garments,  she  still  re- 
mained the  charming  baby-doll  of  the  household. 
Her  clothes  continued  to  be  made  of  light-colored 
and  fragile  materials,  which  she  was  constantly 
adjured  not  to  soil.  Her  complexion,  her  hair, 
her  tiny  hands  and  feet  were  discussed  in  her 
presence  as  if  they  were  marketable  assets.  Al- 
most the  first  words  in  her  vocabulary  were 
"  nice  "  and  "  pretty;  "  the  one  subtly  stimulating 
sex-consciousness,  the  other  associated  with  her 
physical  limitations  and  the  good  looks  which 
were  to  be  a  chief  end  of  her  existence.  For  her 
alone  was  coined  the  phrase:  pretty  is  that  pretty 
does.  Boys  did  not  have  to  be  pretty,  only  good 
and  smart;  and,  therefore,  in  the  initial  rivalry  of 
the  sexes  she  instinctively  learned  to  lay  her  em- 
phasis on  prettiness.  As  a  consequence,  while 
she  was  still  in  knee-length  dresses,  clothing,  man- 
ners, and  appearance  became  of  superlative  im- 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD        5 

portance.  Her  guardians  need  not  have  been  sur- 
prised, when,  a  few  years  later,  she  became  a  vain 
and  self-conscious  creature,  already  measuring  her 
beauty  against  that  of  other  girls,  and  prematurely 
trying  it  on  the  males  of  her  acquaintance. 

But  alas  for  her  if  her  hair  did  not  curl — if  she 
turned  out  plain,  or  "  not  so  pretty  as  her  mother 
was  "  !  She  heard  from  grandmothers  and  other 
ladies  of  fading  complexions  and  charms,  over 
their  needlework  and  tea,  a  chorus  of  pity.  Many 
a  little  girl  has  cried  her  eyes  out  in  secret  be- 
cause she  had  straight  hair,  large  ears,  or  a  muddy 
skin.  This  constant  emphasis  upon  appearance 
had  the  effect,  upon  one  temperament,  of  con- 
centrating the  desire  of  her  whole  nature  on  the 
attainment  of  conventional  prettiness;  upon  an- 
other more  sensitive  one  to  create  a  morbid  em- 
barrassment amounting  to  tragedy;  and  some- 
times upon  stronger  natures,  to  turn  their  aspira- 
tions toward  some  form  of  practical  efficiency  or 
to  intellectual  pursuits.  However  it  turned  out, 
before  the  girl-child  was  ten  years  old  she  had  re- 
ceived an  indelible  impression  that  beauty,  par- 
ticularly a  purely  physical  and  luscious  loveliness 
—such  as  would  have  been  a  disadvantage  to  a 
boy — was  the  most  important  attainment  of  a 
young  girl's  life. 

Very  early  in  this  process  of  inculcating  fem- 
ininity it  was  necessary  to  check  and  pervert  her 


6        CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

physical  impulses.  Like  the  racing-horse,  she 
must  be  trained  while  yet  a  colt  never  to  break 
her  gait.  The  goal  of  conventional  prettiness 
permitted  no  indulgence  in  dirt  or  sunburn,  there- 
fore she  could  not  run  or  play  freely  out-of-doors 
nor  develop  her  muscles  in  competitive  games  that 
required  speed  and  wind,  a  quick  eye  and  a  sure 
aim.  Being  a  lively  animal,  her  natural  energy 
would  try  to  find  outlet  somewhere  at  first,  ac- 
cording to  her  temperament  and  coerced  by  her 
parents' ideals  of  woman's  sphere.  If  she  had  a  ro- 
bust body  and  a  strong-willed,  original  personality, 
she  would  kick  over  the  traces  and  break  through 
the  corral  fence  a  good  many  times  before  the 
habits  of  domestication  became  ingrained.  Such 
a  temperament  was  always  a  source  of  trouble 
until  she  submitted  to  the  life  predestined  for  her 
by  the  traditions  of  her  foremothers.  She  was, 
indeed,  fortunate  if  her  temper  was  not  embit- 
tered, her  health  undermined,  or  her  life  made 
unhappy  by  the  thwarting  of  her  natural  character. 
But  if  she  were  born  not  too  vigorous,  and  both 
docile  and  pretty,  her  path  was  smooth  for  her 
from  the  very  beginning.  Before  she  had  mas- 
tered her  letters  she  learned  the  horror  of  dirt, 
and  set  out  on  that  approved  career  of  dainty 
fastidiousness  which  is  the  glory  of  womankind. 
Instead  of  developing  her  muscles  in  large,  free 
movements,  she  spent  her  placid  girlhood  in  dress- 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD        7 

ing  girl-dolls  that  were  models  of  ladylikeness;  in 
giving  little  girls'  tea-parties,  where  the  social 
game  of  their  elders  was  imitated  in  the  exhibi- 
tion of  best  clothes,  the  practice  of  polite,  con- 
versational gossip,  and  the  rehearsal  of  the 
attractive  arts;  and  in  learning  to  make  patch- 
work and  her  own  clothes,  prize  cakes  and  fancy 
jellies — if  her  mother  were  of  the  older  school; 
or,  at  a  later  date,  in  doing  monstrous  fancy- 
work  and  embroidering  her  undergarments. 

While  her  brothers  played  baseball  and  shinny 
or  went  swimming,  she  sat  on  a  piano-stool,  with 
her  feet  a  few  inches  from  the  floor,  practising  the 
hour  or  two  a  day  necessary  to  attain  a  meager 
proficiency.  For  in  that  day  the  ideal  young  lady 
must  play  the  piano;  not  at  all  because  she  had 
musical  talent  worthy  of  serious  cultivation,  or  be- 
cause it  was  a  necessary  equipment  for  life — one 
scarcely  knows  why,  unless  to  keep  her  out  of  mis- 
chief, or,  perhaps,  to  make  her  more  alluring  to 
that  future  husband  who  might  like  a  little  music 
in  the  evenings  now  and  then  to  soothe  his 
nerves. 

Nor  was  her  domestic  training  of  a  much  more 
thorough  sort,  although  the  tradition  that  the 
women  of  the  household  should  be  cooks  and 
manufacturers  was  still  widespread.  Among 
middle-class  American  families  the  domestic  habits 
of  Europe  persisted  long  after  manufactured 


8        CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

goods  were  to  be  had  in  stores,  and  even  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  century  country  women  are  still 
canning  fruit,  making  bedding,  crocheting  lace — 
still  clinging  to  the  handicrafts  of  a  by-gone  indus- 
trial period.  But  the  daughters  of  the  latter  half 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  have  had,  on  the  one 
hand,  slight  respect  for  these  homely  accomplish- 
ments; and,  on  the  other,  scant  opportunity  for 
training  in  the  more  serious  duties  of  administra- 
tion of  the  household. 

The  feminine  training  of  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury was  purely  domestic;  that  of  our  generation 
purely  academic;  and  thus  there  has  been  at  least 
sixty  years  in  the  interim  when  girls  were  brought 
up  almost  without  education  for  domestic  life,  and 
wholly  without  practical  preparation  for  any  other 
kind  of  life.  During  this  period  the  manufac- 
ture of  cotton  and  woolen  goods  in  factories 
was  superseding  domestic  processes;  and  even  the 
preparation  of  food  products  was  being  trans- 
ferred from  the  home  to  large  collective  agencies. 
As  the  processes  of  production  were  taken  out 
of  the  house  the  physically  stronger  girls  and 
women  without  male  support  followed  it  into  the 
factory,  there  to  become  producers  again,  or  into 
great  department  stores,  to  be  distributors.  But 
the  great  body  of  mothers  and  daughters  left  be- 
hind in  homes  still  clung  instinctively  to  the  con- 
vention that  domestic  life  was  the  economic  sphere 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD        9 

of  women,  although  the  necessary  handicrafts 
which  had  made  it  so  were  all  but  gone. 

The  housewife  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 
earned  her  own  living,  and  often  quite  half  that 
of  the  family,  by  her  labor,  beside  bearing  and 
rearing  children;  and  many  women  in  our  time,  on 
the  other  hand,  are  rapidly  acquiring  economic  in- 
dependence; but,  in  the  century  between,  thou- 
sands of  women  in  America  scarcely  earned  their 
salt.  Not  because  they  were  lazy  or  incapable, 
but  because  the  older  ideal  did  not  permit  any  but 
a  serving-woman  to  go  outside  the  home  to  earn 
money,  and  the  occupations  which  had  formerly 
made  the  home  both  a  workshop  and  a  store- 
house no  longer  demanded  their  service. 

So  when  our  docile  young  girl  in  her  immaculate 
frock  had  tired  of  playing  with  dolls  and  giving 
mannerly  parties,  she  occupied  herself  in  painting 
on  velvet,  in  embroidery,  crochet,  or  tatting,  and 
in  piano  practice,  in  the  intervals  of  a  very  polite 
education.  In  school  she  learned  the  common 
branches  and,  if  she  kept  on  long  enough,  acquired 
a  superficial  knowledge  of  English  and  American 
literature,  made  a  painful  reading-acquaintance 
with  classical  French,  absorbed  a  little  political 
history  of  by-gone  European  states,  and,  occa- 
sionally, a  little  mathematical  astronomy  and 
polite,  herbarium  botany.  In  those  days,  no 
knowledge  of  physiology,  no  discoveries  of  the 


io      CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

laws  of  life  in  the  biological  laboratory,  ever  dis- 
turbed the  guarded  decency  of  the  mind  of  any 
potential  mother  of  the  race. 

This  purely  cultural  and  well-intentioned,  but 
misdirected,  education  for  young  girls  was  one  of 
the  early  by-products  of  the  theories  of  democ- 
racy. In  the  Old  World  men  and  women  had 
been  born  to  a  definite  status  in  society,  in  which 
economic  opportunities,  duties,  training,  and  even 
costume,  were  predetermined;  but  in  the  newer 
world,  when  the  pioneers  of  the  Colonial  period 
had  established  their  families  with  a  competence,  it 
became  their  ambition  to  lift  their  descendants  into 
a  higher  social  class.  While  the  father  was  earn- 
ing the  money  to  fulfil  their  ambition,  and  the 
mother  continued  to  practise  the  traditional  handi- 
crafts of  the  household,  the  daughters  went  to 
school  and  expressed,  by  their  white-handedness 
and  all  but  useless  accomplishments,  the  rising  so- 
cial status  of  the  family. 

As  domestic  manufactures  were  superseded  by 
factory-made  products,  there  was  less  and  less 
for  girls  to  do  at  home,  and  there  arose  a  kind 
of  spurious  feminine  craft  in  the  shape  of  in- 
artistic and  perfectly  useless  fancy-work.  When 
the  patchwork  quilt,  the  hand-woven  bed-cover 
and  linen  sheet  had  been  replaced  by  the  manu- 
factured comforter  and  cheap  cotton,  women  be- 
gan to  devise  pillow  shams,  bedspreads  of  cloth 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD      n 

cut  into  crazy-shaped  pieces,  or  knitted  of  a  thou- 
sand tiny  shells.  When  the  feather  pillow,  which 
once  cost  the  housewife  so  much  labor,  came  to 
be  made  in  quantities  by  machinery,  she  turned 
her  ambition  into  baby-pillows,  pine-pillows,  head- 
rests, throws,  tidies,  feather  and  hair  flowers,  sofa 
cushions,  and  rag  rugs — in  short,  into  a  vast  variety 
of  quasi-ornamental,  altogether  hideous,  and  gen- 
erally useless  articles.  The  tradition  that  the 
woman  should  be  a  manufacturer — a  tradition 
handed  down  from  the  dim  ages  when  the  female 
tanned  the  skins,  wove  the  mats  and  blankets,  and 
built  the  tepee — died  slowly,  and  is  not  yet  wholly 
vanished. 

It  may  seem  very  strange  that  girls  did  not 
learn  at  least  to  cook,  that  being  the  oldest  and 
most  universal  of  women's  occupations;  and  all 
the  more  as  the  chief  pride  of  their  mothers  lay  in 
housewifery,  the  center  of  which  lay  in  the  kitchen. 
As  other  handicrafts  became  less  imperative,  the 
housewife  of  the  earlier  period  concentrated  her 
whole  mind  on  feeding  her  men-folks  lavishly. 
Imbued  with  the  colonial-English  tradition  of 
good  eating,  and  spurred  on  by  the  rivalry  of 
neighbor  women  equally  energetic,  she  piled  cake, 
pie,  doughnuts,  preserved  fruit,  and  pancakes, 
with  meat  and  vegetables,  on  the  creaking  table. 
She  would  doubtless  have  insisted  on  her  pretty 
daughter  learning  to  make  all  these  elaborate 


12      CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

dishes  as  she  had  learned  them  from  her  own 
mother,  but  for  the  arrival  of  thousands  of  im- 
migrant Irish  and  German  servants  d5  give  her 
cheap  and  willing  assistance. 

Nobody,  not  even  a  sturdy  pioneer  woman,  con- 
tinues to  do  hard  manual  labor  when  it  is  no 
longer  either  compulsory  or  admirable.  The 
highly-skilled  house-mother,  remembering  the  hot 
stove,  the  aching  feet,  and  the  never-ending 
"  woman's  work,"  wanted  her  daughters  to  have 
an  easier  life  than  she  had  had,  and  was  glad  to 
accept  the  help  of  clumsy  peasant  hands  in  order 
to  release  them  from  such  hardship.  Moreover, 
the  plain  American  fathers  and  mothers  still  as- 
sociated gentle-hood  with  freedom  from  manual 
labor  of  an  obligatory  kind,  and  would  not  permit 
their  soft-handed  daughters  to  compete  with  for- 
eign servant  girls. 

During  the  years  of  adolescence  girls  went  to 
school,  not  because  they  expected  to  use  the  edu- 
cation they  were  getting  in  any  practical  way, 
but  largely  to  fill  up  the  time  in  a  ladylike  man- 
ner until  they  should  be  courted  and  married.  If 
now  and  then  some  girl — too  plain  to  join  in  the 
beauty  contest,  or  too  vital  and  ambitious  to  be 
contented  with  so  tame  a  program  of  life — at- 
tempted to  break  through  the  meshes  of  the  fem- 
inine cult  into  a  larger  sphere,  she  found  few 
opportunities  for  solid  education  or  occupation 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD      13 

open  to  her,  and  was  greeted  with  general  dis- 
approval. If  she  had  a  sturdy,  fighting  temper, 
and  a  love  of  learning  or  achievement,  she  some- 
times threw  away  her  pack  of  feminine  traditions 
and  took  the  trail  in  pursuit  of  the  ideal.  It  was, 
indeed,  a  desert  that  they  traveled — those  first, 
few,  strong-minded  young  women — and,  however 
the  adventure  turned  out,  the  effect  of  opposition, 
of  lack  of  sympathy  and  opportunity,  the  starva- 
tion of  the  natural  human  soul  hungering  for 
justice  and  for  the  approval  of  its  kind,  could 
only  be  to  pervert  character.  Some  came  out  of 
the  struggle  strong  creatures,  but  masculine  im- 
itations rather  than  fully  developed  women; 
others,  maddened  by  injustice  or  misunderstand- 
ing, set  their  hands  against  every  man,  champion- 
ing wild  or  premature  causes;  but  the  larger  num- 
ber disappeared  from  history,  merely  defeated 
feminine  souls  carrying  too  great  a  handi- 
cap. 

During  all  those  years  when  plain  and  pretty 
girls  alike  were  growing  up,  they  came  somehow 
to  know  that  their  destiny  was  to  be  married.  Not 
that  any  one  asked  them  what  they  were  going 
to  be  or  do — that  would  have  been  quite  improper 
or  might  have  precipitated  questions  which  girls 
should  not  ask.  Their  brothers,  even  before  they 
left  the  grammar  school,  were  encouraged  to  talk 
of  their  future  occupations,  and  to  make  prepara- 


14      CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

tion  for  them.  But  while  girls  heard  from  the  pul- 
pit and  the  rostrum,  and  read  in  the  harmless  ro- 
mances of  Sunday-school  books  or  ladies'  maga- 
zines, that  marriage  and  motherhood  were  the  in- 
evitable and  only  admirable  career  of  woman, 
nothing  was  ever  said  to  them,  except  by  way  of  a 
joke,  about  either.  Indirectly,  some  conscientious 
mothermight  approach  it  shamefacedly,  suggesting 
that  the  daughter  shouldlearn  somehouseholdtask, 
"  because  you  may  have  a  home  of  your  own,  some 
day;"  but  never  a  serious  word  was  said  about 
wifehood  and  motherhood.  The  atmosphere  of 
prudery  surrounding  marriage  and  child-bearing, 
which  was  all  but  universal  a  century  ago,  is  still 
common  enough  among  ignorant  women,  who  will 
never  discuss  before  a  spinster  of  any  age,  not 
even  before  a  charity  visitor,  the  facts  incident  to 
pregnancy.  While  boys  were  learning  in  the 
farmyard  and  from  other  men  the  facts  and 
processes  of  reproduction,  girls  walked  in  a  mist 
of  secrecy  and  innuendo.  When  their  mothers 
were  bearing  children  they  were  sent  away  from 
home  on  some  pretense,  lest  they  should  witness 
the  great  travail  and  be  afraid;  or,  perhaps,  be- 
cause their  parents  were  ashamed;  or,  it  may  be, 
solely  because  the  convention  was  that  young  girls 
must  be  kept  "  innocent." 

But  girls  are  no  more  fools  than  boys,  and  the 
atmosphere    of    prudish    or    vulgar    suggestion 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD      15 

aroused  in  the  keen-witted  ones  a  determination  to 
know  how  babies  came,  and  what  marriage  meant. 
Many  a  young  girl,  not  daring  to  ask  what  she 
wanted  to  know  of  older  women,  got  a  perverted 
knowledge  from  vulgar-minded  servants,  or  from 
the  medical  dictionaries  in  the  library;  or  puzzled 
out  the  obscene  advertisements  and  tragedies  of 
the  half-world  covertly  described  in  the  news- 
papers; or  pored  over  the  sexual  horrors  of  the 
ancient  scriptures,  to  satisfy  her  curiosity. 

In  the  less  curious  and  less  original  type  of 
girl  the  conventional  silence  about  her  future 
career  created  a  shrinking  disgust  from  the  facts 
of  reproductive  life.  She  became  ashamed  of  her 
functions  without  knowing  why.  She  could  not 
help  seeing  that  the  figures  of  women  were  not 
beautiful  during  gestation,  and  that  pregnancy 
and  childbirth  were  a  period  of  inconvenience,  if 
not  of  semi-invalidism.  While  the  "  glory  "  of 
motherhood  was  constantly  preached  at  her,  she 
heard  women  criticising  the  indecency  of  wives 
who  appeared  in  public  in  the  later  months  of 
pregnancy,  and  sometimes  saw  the  lascivious 
smiles,  or  overheard  the  comments  of  men  upon 
them.  Nor  could  she  escape  knowing  that  some 
men  were  wild  beasts,  nor  the  suggestion  that  men 
in  general  were  not  to  be  trusted  in  the  dark. 
Thus  everything  in  her  own  nature  and  everything 
in  the  social  influences  about  her  tended  to  pro- 


1 6      CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

duce  repulsion,  if  not  terror,  for  the  only  ap- 
proved destiny  held  out  before  her. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  adolescent  years  of  both 
the  inquisitive  and  the  acquiescent  young  woman, 
her  mind  was  being  colored  by  the  effeminate  fic- 
tion of  the  day,  whose  chief  note  was  love  and 
lovers,  with  a  happy  ending  in  marriage.  That 
the  experiences  of  the  heroine  did  not  seem  to  cor- 
respond with  the  lives  of  the  women  she  knew, 
made  it  all  the  more  alluring.  In  this  dream-world 
there  were  no  puzzling  and  inevitable  facts  of 
nature — the  lover  was  always  pure  and  brave  and 
considerate;  the  heroine  beautiful  and  adored. 
There  was  no  baby  even,  as  in  real  life,  to  precipi- 
tate difficulties,  except  on  the  last  page,  when  he 
might  arrive  to  fulfil  the  hope  of  an  heir  to  some 
great  property. 

Somewhere  along  this  road  of  female  destiny 
the  girl  received  a  shock;  from  the  newspapers, 
perhaps,  or  more  often  through  some  tragedy  in 
her  own  community,  she  heard  that  some  unhappy 
girl  had  murdered  her  baby  or  ended  her  un- 
wedded  romance  in  suicide.  Then,  suddenly,  if 
she  were  capable  of  reasoning  at  all,  she  would 
realize  that  motherhood  was  only  considered 
sacred  when  licensed  by  the  State  and  by  the 
Church. 

At  last,  when  she  had  filled  in  a  few  years 
following  her  schooldays  with  "  helping  her 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD      17 

mother,"  "  going  into  society,"  playing  the  piano, 
and  teaching  a  Sunday-school  class,  and  in  mod- 
estly trying  out  her  charms  on  the  young  men  of 
her  acquaintance,  The  Lover  arrived.  It  is  not 
without  reason  that  the  period  of  courtship  has 
been  depicted  from  time  immemorial  as  the  hap- 
piest of  life.  The  exhilaration  of  quickening  in- 
stinct, the  zest  of  the  game  of  advance  and  re- 
treat, the  grateful  mutual  flattery,  are  full  of  joy 
to  the  woman  even  more  than  to  the  man.  For 
while  to  the  man  it  might  become  the  highest 
experience  of  his  life  if  the  ending  were  happy, 
it  seldom  had  the  full  allurement  of  novelty. 
Very  few  men,  probably,  brought  to  their  final 
courtship  an  unvulgarized  mind,  a  chaste  person, 
and  an  entire  ignorance  of  the  other  sex,  such  as 
girls  are  expected  to  have.  To  the  woman  court- 
ship and  marriage  were  the  culmination  of  a  long 
dream,  in  which  her  natural  instincts  and  hunger 
for  life — a  real  life  of  her  own — overcame  her 
fear  of  men  and  her  innocent  dread  of  the  travail 
of  motherhood.  Whether  their  temperaments 
were  really  domestic  and  maternal  or  not,  passion, 
romance,  and  a  desire  for  a  career,  combined  with 
the  tradition  that  marriage  is  the  highest  if  not 
the  only  destiny  to  make  young  women  take  the 
path  of  least  resistance. 

It  used  to  be  said  that  childhood  was  the  hap- 
piest time  of  life,  and  girlhood,  even  more  than 


1 8      CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD 

boyhood,  full  of  joy.  Certainly  it  was  so  when 
the  parents  were  wise  and  sympathetic,  and  the 
children  born  with  a  harmonious  temperament  in  a 
normal  body.  But  the  unconscious  joy  usually  at- 
tributed to  childhood  has  not  so  often  existed  in 
fact.  Not  even  yet  are  parents  wise  enough  to 
restrain  without  arbitrary  coercion;  to  make  the 
path  of  discipline  and  duty  more  alluring  than 
that  of  self-indulgence;  and  to  provide  a  whole- 
some outlet  for  physical  energy.  Nor  are  they 
sympathetic  enough  to  enter  into  the  fearsome 
questions  of  the  young  soul,  and,  out  of  the  rich- 
ness of  adult  experience,  guide  it  till  it  attains 
courage  and  self-poise.  In  a  girlhood  such  as  I 
have  been  describing,  happiness  was  only  possible 
to  the  girl  who  submitted  to  the  conventional 
mold.  The  more  vigorous  she  was,  the  more 
potential  character  she  had,  the  less  easy  she 
would  find  it  to  conform  to  the  pattern  laid  before 
her.  And  if  she  did  conform  she  was  likely  to 
arrive  at  womanhood  physically  undeveloped,  and 
robbed  of  a  part  of  her  bodily  vigor;  prudish  and 
ignorant,  yet  eager  to  be  married;  without  prep- 
aration for  domestic  and  maternal  cares,  and  in- 
capable of  earning  a  fair  living  wage  by  any  other 
means;  and  with  an  abnormally  feminized  con- 
science, which  had  no  conception  of  men  or  the 
moral  issues  of  their  lives.  The  girl  of  the 
middle  Nineteenth  Century  was  fortunate  if,  by 


CONVENTIONS  OF  GIRLHOOD      19 

the  grace  of  God  and  the  accident  of  heedless 
parents,  she  sometimes  arrived  at  the  goal  of  mar- 
riage a  little  less  docile,  pretty,  anemic,  con- 
scientious, and  incompetent  than  the  ideals  of  her 
time  would  have  had  her  become. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

"  As  the  vine  which  has  long  twined  in  graceful  foliage  about 
the  oak,  and  has  been  lifted  by  it  into  sunshine,  will,  when  the 
hardy  plant  has  been  rifled  by  the  thunderbolt,  cling  around  it 
with  its  caressing  tendrils,  and  bind  up  its  shattered  boughs,  so 
it  is  beautifully  ordained  by  Providence  that  woman,  who  is  the 
ornament  and  dependent  of  man  in  his  happier  hours,  should 
be  his  stay  and  solace  when  smitten  with  sudden  calamity,  wind- 
ing herself  into  the  sudden  recesses  of  his  nature,  tenderly  sup- 
porting the  drooping  head,  and  binding  up  the  broken  heart." — 
From  The  Lady's  Album,  1848. 

"  Woman  has  a  better,  a  holier  vocation.  She  works  in  the 
elements  of  human  nature.  Her  orders  of  architecture  are 
formed  in  the  human  soul — Obedience,  Temperance,  Truth,  Love, 
Piety — these  she  must  build  up  in  the  character  of  her  children; 
often  she  is  called  upon  to  repair  the  ravages  which  sin,  care, 
and  the  desolating  storms  of  life  leave  in  the  mind  and  heart 
of  her  husband,  whom  she  reverences  and  obeys.  This  task  she 
should  perform  faithfully  but  with  humility;  remembering  that 
it  was  for  woman's  sake  Eden  was  forfeited,  because  Adam 
loved  his  wife  more  than  his  Creator." — Mrs.  S.  J.  HALE  in 
Woman's  Record,  1872. 

"  But  the  woman  is  the  glory  of  the  man.  .  .  .  Neither  was 
the  man  created  for  the  woman ;  but  the  woman  for  the  man." — 
PAUL  to  the  Corinthians. 

THE  truest  things  are  the  platitudes  which 
everybody  speaks,  but  which  few  ever  think  of 
practising.  The  sensible  men  and  women  of  the 

30 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          21 

past  century  knew  then — as  they  do  now — that  the 
betrothal  and  wedding  customs  in  vogue  were 
preposterous,  injurious,  and  even  vulgar;  and 
that  the  prospective  bride  and  bridegroom  were 
rendered  unfit  for  parenthood  by  the  fatigue  of 
the  wedding  preparations  and  the  abnormality  of 
their  situation.  Every  father  and  mother,  out  of 
their  own  experience,  could  have  warned  and  ad- 
vised— on  matters  of  housekeeping  and  property 
settlements  they  did  so — but  on  the  purposes  and 
consequences  of  marriage,  the  one  great  central 
relation  which  concerned  the  engaged  pair  and 
posterity,  nothing  was  said. 

It  was  as  if  each  generation  should  begin 
without  receiving  any  cumulated  information  on 
the  subject  of  house-building,  and  should  there- 
fore be  obliged  to  try  all  the  experiments  and 
make  all  the  mistakes  of  previous  generations 
over  again.  Because  of  the  "  conspiracy  of 
silence,"  young  lovers  were  deprived  of  every 
safeguard  of  knowledge  in  respect  to  sex  and 
parenthood.  It  is  impossible  to  understand  the 
woman's  attitude  toward  marriage,  domesticity, 
and  motherhood,  unless  one  visualizes  the  igno- 
rance and  perversion  of  ideas  with  which  girls 
came  to  the  great  event  of  their  lives.  At  the  risk 
of  tediousness  it  is  necessary  to  present  the  mate- 
rial phases  of  marriage  in  order  that  their 
consequences  in  diverting  attention  from  the 


22          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

aspects  most  significant  to  society,  may  be  com- 
prehended. 

To  the  young  girl  the  engagement  ring  was  the 
symbol  both  of  obligation  and  individuality,  for  by 
virtue  of  it  she  became  for  the  first  time  in  her 
life  a  person  of  importance.  To  her  school- 
mates she  was  an  object  of  envy  because  she  was 
peeping  through  the  door  which  they  all  desired  to 
enter.  If  the  young  man  were  acceptable  to 
her  parents,  her  father  was  frankly  glad  to  trans- 
fer the  economic  burden  of  a  daughter  to  another 
man;  while  her  mother  began  to  treat  her  with  a 
mixture  of  respect  and  solicitude  which  she  could 
not  comprehend.  Theoretically  she  knew  that 
she  had  incurred  an  obligation  to  her  betrothed 
which  would  some  day  demand  wifely  surrender 
and  devotion;  but  the  more  protected  and  in- 
nocent she  was,  the  less  did  she  understand  what 
lay  behind  the  veil  of  marriage.  To  think 
definitely  of  her  future  relation  to  her  husband 
and  to  prepare  herself  for  its  consequences  would 
have  been  as  gross  an  impropriety  as  to  expose  her 
person  to  his  gaze. 

Nor  was  she  conscious  that  she  would  be  ex- 
pected to  submit  her  will  and  her  opinions  as 
well  as  her  body  to  his  control.  Although  she 
heard  on  Sunday  from  the  pulpit  that  wives  were 
to  obey  their  husbands;  and  although  she  knew 
that  her  mother,  in  all  essential  matters,  sub- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          23 

mitted  to  her  father,  however  unwillingly,  she 
trusted  that  her  own  charm  and  shrewdness 
would  prove  as  potent  after  marriage  as  it  seemed 
to  be  before.  For  during  the  spell  of  unrealized 
desire  the  two  young  lovers  idealized  each  other; 
and  the  lover,  who  had,  perhaps,  only  lately 
ceased  from  bullying  his  mother,  and  would  take 
it  for  granted  that  his  wife  should  defer  to  him 
as  his  mother  had  yielded  to  his  father,  during  this 
one  interval  deferred  to  his  betrothed.  She  could 
not  but  suppose  that  a  lover  so  tender  anddevoted, 
who  brought  her  gifts  and  did  whatever  her  whims 
commanded,  would  be  less  dominant  than  other 
women's  husbands. 

Yet  if  the  betrothal  were  prolonged  enough, 
the  lovers  would  find  that  golden  ring  the  begin- 
ning of  a  chain  against  which  both  would  chafe. 
According  to  the  customs  of  the  time,  neither 
could  properly  show  an  interest  in  any  other  un- 
married person  of  the  opposite  sex  without  giv- 
ing cause  for  justifiable  jealousy.  Although  jeal- 
ousy was  generally  regarded  as  a  testimony  of  af- 
fection, it  was — if  the  lovers  had  but  known  it— 
merely  a  mean  exhibition  of  that  suspicious,  pro- 
prietary attitude  which  would  make  the  marriage 
a  bondage  rather  than  the  highest  expression  of 
mutual  confidence. 

The  segregation  of  lovers  from  the  rest  of  the 
community,  and  the  taboo  surrounding  them,  was 


24         THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

symptomatic  of  the  isolation  in  which  they  were 
to  live  the  rest  of  their  lives.  From  this  time  the 
man  must  never  show  any  admiration  for  another 
woman;  and  the  girl  must  conceal  whatever  inter- 
est she  might  have  in  any  other  man.  In  village 
communities,  in  church  gatherings,  in  temperance 
and  missionary  societies,  men  herded  with  men 
and  women  flocked  with  women,  losing  the  stim- 
ulus of  the  social  and  intellectual  comradeship  en- 
joyed by  the  sexes  in  modern  life.  Aside  from 
the  monotony  of  such  a  society  its  worst  aspect  lay 
in  the  in-and-in  breeding  of  sex  characteristics. 
Men,  associating  constantly  with  men,  perpetuated 
the  standards  and  habits  inherited  from  their 
fathers;  women,  corraled  by  themselves,  gossiped 
of  their  narrower  experiences,  perpetuating  their 
own  pettiness.  Between  boy  and  girl,  between 
lover  and  maiden,  between  adult  man  and  woman, 
stood  always  the  menacing  figure  of  sex  with  the 
sword  of  chastity,  lest  propriety  and  property  be 
violated.  Not  a  little  of  the  lack  of  comprehen- 
sion of  each  sex  by  the  other  arose  from  this  sur- 
vival of  the  ownership  of  woman,  which  resulted 
in  a  general  assumption  that  neither  could  have 
any  decent  pleasure  in  the  society  of  any 
person  of  the  other  sex  except  their  own  life 
partner. 

The  engaged  girl,  however,  was  not  likely  to 
question  or  to  resent  the  flattering  jealousy  of  a 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          25 

man  whose  preference  set  her  for  the  first  time 
upon  a  pedestal,  even  had  she  not  been  diverted  by 
the  conventional  preparations  for  the  marriage. 
Indeed,  the  man  often  became  quite  subordinate  in 
her  mind  to  the  trousseau  and  the  wedding  dis- 
play. Her  parents  were  the  more  inclined  to 
indulge  her  extravagant  notions — for  the  last  time 
—because  it  would  reflect  credit  upon  themselves. 
In  the  early  part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  the 
ordinary  bride's  outfit  followed  the  traditions  of 
the  European  peasant  woman,  and  consisted 
chiefly  of  the  chest  of  linen  and  household  fur- 
nishings made  by  her  own  hand;  but,  as  manufac- 
tures supplanted  home-made  articles,  the  bride 
devoted  more  and  more  attention  to  the  personal 
trousseau.  For  months  before  the  wedding-day 
she  cut  and  fitted  and  sewed;  crocheted  and  tatted 
and  embroidered;  in  order  that  she  might  be  able 
to  exhibit  to  her  female  friends  and,  incidentally, 
to  the  bewildered  lover,  so  many  dozens  of  elab- 
orate, hand-made  chemises,  nightgowns,  petti- 
coats; tablecloths,  napkins,  and  towels.  And 
while  the  bride  was  working  night  and  day  harder 
than  ever  before  in  her  life,  the  proud  mother, 
with  scarcely  less  enthusiasm,  assisted  the  ambi- 
tious dressmaker  of  the  neighborhood  to  contrive 
as  many  and  as  elaborate  dresses  as  possible  from 
the  money  provided  by  a  father  whose  pride  it  was 
to  give  his  daughter  a  suitable  outfit. 


26          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

If  it  be  thought  that  all  this  was  only  mere 
girlish  extravagance,  let  us  remember  that  for  the 
domestic  woman  the  wedding-day  was  not  only  the 
first,  but  the  sole  time  that  she  would  ever  be  a 
person  of  public  interest.  Not  even  if  she  should 
bear  a  son  to  become  the  savior  of  his  country, 
would  she  be  the  principal  in  her  family,  or  so 
conspicuous  a  figure  in  a  solemn  ceremony.  For 
a  day  of  such  importance  nothing  was  quite  good 
enough.  The  trousseau  was  as  essential  to  the 
prospective  bride  as  an  outfit  to  the  explorer  of 
arctic  or  tropical  wilds;  or,  rather,  it  was  like  the 
equipment  of  a  traveler  who  sets  out  for  an  un- 
known Oriental  country — for  who  knew  what 
might  be  needed  and  yet  unattainable  in  the 
great  adventure  upon  which  she  was  about  to 
embark ! 

Like  other  adventurers,  she  might  be  taking 
many  inappropriate  things.  The  girl  who  mar- 
ried a  young  instructor  attached  to  one  of  the 
best  colleges  might  find  it  necessary  to  lay  away 
the  dozens  of  delicate  undergarments,  replacing 
them  with  plain,  stout  materials  to  be  washed  with 
her  own  hands.  The  trousseau,  at  the  end  of  the 
first  year,  might  be  quite  useless  in  view  of  pro- 
spective motherhood;  and  might  be  laid  away  in 
lavender,  never  to  be  resurrected,  perhaps,  except 
for  some  old-folks  masquerade  devised  by  her 
grown-up  daughter. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          27 

No  small  part  of  the  enjoyment  of  the  ante- 
wedding  preparations  lay  in  the  receiving  of 
presents.  While  cities  were  few  in  America,  and 
the  bulk  of  the  population  lived  in  villages  and 
rural  neighborhoods,  the  custom  of  bridal  gifts 
was  seldom  overdone;  but,  after  the  war,  the  in- 
crease of  wealth  and  the  growth  of  urban  com- 
munities gave  women,  particularly,  leisure  and  ex- 
cuse for  excessive  emphasis  on  the  ornamental 
side  of  life.  The  habit  of  giving  wedding  pres- 
ents— as  is  the  tendency  of  such  conventions — 
became  an  exaggerated  social  obligation  which 
has  only  recently  begun  to  diminish  in  force.  The 
friends  of  both  families  vied  with  each  other  in 
expressing  not  so  much  their  affection  as  their 
social  status  by  the  elegance  of  their  contribution 
to  the  display.  Day  after  day  the  bride  and  her 
fiance  received  them,  discussing  their  beauty,  use- 
fulness, and  cost  in  view  of  the  future  menage. 
In  a  country  town,  where  the  neighbors  clubbed 
together  to  fit  out  completely  the  new  kitchen, 
the  friendly  practicality  of  the  gift  was  a  fit  ex- 
pression of  the  attitude  of  the  village  toward  a 
popular  young  couple.  But  more  often  the  gifts 
were  a  showy  agglomeration  of  more  or  less  use- 
less or  unsuitable  articles,  in  the  polite  acknowl- 
edgment of  which  the  overworked  bride  spent  all 
her  spare  time  for  weeks  before  and  after  mar- 
riage. All  the  pleasant  excitement  attendant  upon 


28          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

giving  and  receiving  was  likely  to  be  destroyed  by 
the  numerous  duplications — no  bride  could  accept 
enthusiastically  a  sixth  cut-glass  bowl  or  a  sev- 
enth butter-knife.  When  the  wedding  etiquette 
reached  the  stage  where  all  the  presents  must  be 
displayed  to  the  givers  and  the  guests  in  a  room 
set  apart  for  them,  the  custom  had  degenerated 
into  undisguised  commercialism. 

As  the  great  day  drew  near  the  bride  and  her 
family  were  usually  engaged  in  a  whirl  of  fever- 
ish preparations:  the  house  must  be  prepared  for 
a  wedding  breakfast,  supper,  or  reception,  the 
church  decorated  for  the  ceremony,  the  wedding 
attendants  schooled  in  their  parts — even  the  bride 
and  groom  must  u  rehearse  "  the  pageant  in  which 
they  were  to  be  the  chief  figures.  Even  for  a 
"  simple  "  wedding  the  fatigue  and  the  expense 
were  invariably  greater  than  had  been  anticipated, 
and  the  higher  emotions  of  all  concerned  were 
drowned  in  the  effort  to  make  as  much  "  splurge  " 
as  possible,  and  in  anxiety  about  petty,  material 
details.  Thus  the  parents  and  the  household 
went  to  bed  on  the  bridal  eve  utterly  exhausted, 
and  with  last  admonitions  to  the  young  girl  to 
sleep  that  her  beauty  might  not  be  dimmed  on  the 
morrow. 

The  wedding-day  itself  would  probably  remain 
forever,  in  the  memories  of  both  bride  and  groom, 
a  nightmare  of  jumbled  impressions — the  con- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          29 

fusion  and  haste  of  last  preparations,  the  full- 
dress  parade,  the  blur  of  curious  spectators,  even 
the  solemn  vows  and  prayers;  the  congratula- 
tions, tears,  and  kisses;  the  eating,  drinking,  and 
going  away — all  alike,  to  the  chief  actors  in  the 
spectacle,  could  only  be  a  series  of  perfunctory 
performances  to  be  lived  through  in  order  that 
they  might  be  allowed  to  attain  the  joy  of  per- 
manent companionship.  It  was  as  if  the  King's 
trumpeters  had  announced  from  the  city  towers: 
"  Behold  this  man  and  woman  about  to  enter 
upon  the  most  intimate  human  relation !  See  how 
correct,  how  respectable  they  are!  " 

Meanwhile,  during  all  this  furor,  the  groom 
had  been  quite  a  minor  figure,  occupied  in  waiting 
on  the  bride,  assisting  in  the  preparations,  and 
privately  cursing  the  social  traditions  which  had 
involved  him  in  so  irksome  a  tangle  of  splurge  and 
etiquette.  If  he  were  a  simple,  clean-minded  fel- 
low, the  irritation  and  the  strain  of  his  abnormal 
position  were  likely  to  put  him  in  anything  but  a 
loverlike  frame  of  mind;  if  he  were  the  "  average 
young  man,"  he  would  probably  accept  the  in- 
vitation of  his  bachelor  friends  to  celebrate  the 
last  days  of  his  freedom  with  an  orgy  of  eating, 
drinking,  and  unprintable  jests. 

The  facetious  attitude  toward  marriage  was 
often,  in  country  neighborhoods,  carried  to  the 
height  of  a  vulgar  practical  joke  in  the  custom  of 


30         THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

the  "  shivaree."  Upon  the  wedding-night  or 
upon  the  return  of  the  newly-wedded  pair  from 
the  honeymoon,  the  men  friends  surrounded  the 
house,  let  loose  a  pandemonium  of  hideous  noises, 
demanding  a  sight  of  the  bride  and  a  speech  from 
the  groom.  The  custom  was,  in  fact,  so  general 
in  many  places  that  the  bridal  pair  provided  re- 
freshments in  advance  for  the  invading  party. 

It  was  certainly  only  by  the  grace  of  God  and 
much  mutual  affection  that  the  young  married 
couple  kept  their  respect  for  each  other  through 
these  preliminaries  of  marriage.  After  this 
nerve-racking  performance  the  bridegroom  not 
infrequently  found  himself  the  guardian  of  a 
shrinking  child,  who  was  on  the  verge  of  hysterics 
through  exhaustion  and  fear.  To  many  a  man 
there  must  have  been  a  shock  of  astonishment,  if 
not  of  dismay,  on  discovering  that  his  wife  was 
afraid  of  him,  and  had  only  the  vaguest  notion 
of  their  inevitable  marital  relation.  The  con- 
vention of  absolute  ignorance  in  which  the  young 
girl  had  usually  been  brought  up,  made  of  the 
sex  relation  an  experience  scarcely  less  terrible 
than  bodily  assault.  Girls  whose  persons  since 
their  childhood  had  been  sacred  even  from  their 
mother's  eyes,  who  had  been  taught  not  to  look 
at  their  own  bodies,  and  to  bathe  in  the  dark, 
found  themselves  in  the  keeping  of  men  to  whom 
the  sex  relation  was  already  a  commonplace.  The 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE         31 

husband,  as  a  rule,  entered  upon  marriage  with 
slight  illusions  and  with  the  natural  impulses  of  a 
healthy  animal.  The  young  wife  had  been  taught 
to  ignore  the  very  idea  of  passion,  and,  in  pro- 
portion as  she  was  physically  delicate  and  modest, 
received  a  shock  which  was  intensified  if  she  im- 
mediately became  pregnant.  After  a  honeymoon 
of  shame  and  disillusionment,  she  would  gradu- 
ally readjust  her  ideas  to  the  facts  of  life  under 
the  instruction  of  her  husband,  and  if  she  were 
fully  occupied  with  household  details,  would 
ultimately  recover  an  ideal  of  wedded  happiness. 
Then,  and  not  till  then,  would  she  fully  under- 
stand why  her  mother  and  other  wives  had  wept 
instead  of  rejoiced  on  her  wedding-day. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  young  husband,  with 
every  intention  of  cherishing  her,  might  find  him- 
self in  the  position  of  an  unintentional  brute,  and 
might  suffer  as  great  a  disappointment  as  the 
bride,  because  of  mutual  misunderstanding.  If 
he  were  a  man  of  fine  feeling  and  quick  percep- 
tion, and  if  the  wife  were  a  vigorous  and  sensible 
girl,  the  readjustment  might  be  swift  and  happy; 
but  if  he  were  just  the  ordinary  thick-skinned, 
wholesome  fellow  of  the  world,  the  wife  merely 
surrendered,  and  both  emerged  into  mutual  tol- 
eration rather  than  happiness. 

When  the  great  adventure  of  marriage  had 
been  undertaken,  then,  indeed,  began  the  real 


32          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

development  of  the  girl  of  the  past  century. 
Molded  and  hemmed  in  by  the  traditions  of  what 
was  proper  and  desirable  for  girls,  she  had  more 
or  less  consciously  looked  forward  to  emancipa- 
tion into  a  larger  life,  in  which  she  was  to  be  not 
only  the  helpmate  of  her  husband,  but  a  responsi- 
ble personality.  She  had  been  educated  to  be- 
lieve that  in  place  of  an  aggressive  part  in  life, 
her  power  lay  in  her  "  influence,"  and  with  this 
vague  hypnotism  she  expected  to  mold  the  life 
of  her  husband  and  to  control  her  children.  In 
many  cases  she  found  herself  in  the  situation  of 
the  wife  described  in  the  following  paragraph: 

"  A  few  significant  incidents  had  revealed  to  her  that 
his  good  nature  covered  cold-blooded  indifference  where 
all  but  his  own  interests  were  vitally  concerned.  His 
apparent  pliability  hid  a  dexterity  which  evaded  every 
recognized  principle.  In  vain  she  exerted  the  influence 
with  which  he  had  pretended  to  invest  her.  The  first 
effort  proved  that  it  never  really  existed.  It  was  no 
more  in  his  life  than  the  valuable  ornament  on  his  mantel- 
shelf— a  thing  to  be  dusted,  preserved,  and  admired  in 
leisure  hours,  never  set  to  serious  use." 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  young  husband  were 
inspired  by  happiness  and  family  responsibility 
to  rise  above  his  ordinary  level,  the  young  wife's 
childish  ignorance  and  lack  of  intelligent  sym- 
pathy with  his  aims  not  infrequently  thwarted 
them. 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          33 

Misled  by  the  glamor  of  courtship  and  the  ex- 
purgated novels  of  her  girlhood,  perhaps  also  by 
her  parents'  indulgence,  the  bride  naturally  sup- 
posed that  her  feelings,  her  wishes,  would  con- 
tinue to  be  through  marriage,  as  through  the  en- 
gagement, the  determinant  of  their  joint  lives. 
Her  astonishment,  anger,  and  grief,  when  she 
found  that  she  had  to  deal  with  a  being  who  had 
always  had  his  own  way,  and  had  always  been 
deferred  to  by  womenkind,  often  became  a 
tragedy.  She  made  herself  and  her  husband 
wretched;  while  he  in  turn  could  not  comprehend 
why  his  wife  had  suddenly  become  so  different 
from  what  his  mother  was,  from  the  docile 
creature  a  woman  should  be,  from  what  she  had 
appeared  to  be  during  their  courtship. 

The  period  of  readjustment  in  which  the  hus- 
band and  wife  began  to  re-form  each  other's 
character  might  be  uncontentious  between  self- 
respecting  persons,  but  it  was  rarely  happy.  Out 
of  it  emerged  a  new  ideal  of  happiness  for  both, 
or  an  enduring  mutual  discontent.  If  children 
arrived  early  the  personalities  of  both  parents 
were,  at  least  temporarily,  subordinated  to  the 
new  relation.  But  the  original  causes  of  disillu- 
sionment were  often  merely  latent,  and  gradually 
reappeared  in  the  shape  of  unseemly  contests  over 
the  discipline  and  education  of  the  children,  or  in 
squabbles  over  expenditure  and  property.  In  a 


34         THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

majority  of  cases  that  first  great  schism  in  their 
married  life  had  brought  so  much  pain  that  both 
parties  ever  after  shrank  with  horror  from  an- 
other clash.  Inevitably  the  woman,  accustomed 
to  obedience  and  clinging  desperately  to  her  ideal 
of  a  loving  husband,  gave  way  first;  while  the 
man,  bewildered  by  the  strength  of  the  will  he 
had  met,  cautiously  avoided  invoking  it  again. 
When  each  had  realized  the  scarifying  results  of 
selfishness  toward  one  they  loved,  there  grew  up 
a  living  hypothesis  between  them :  "  It  is  better  to 
be  loving  than  to  be  right."  Then,  slowly,  the 
shadowy  ghost  of  their  youthful  aura  of  marriage 
came  back,  and,  if  cherished  by  both,  it  might 
become  a  hovering  angel  of  happiness. 

Such  lives,  issuing  in  mutual  readjustment  and 
soon  merged  in  the  development  of  children, 
should  have  been  and  were,  oftentimes,  rich  in 
domestic  satisfaction;  but  with  one  phase  of  them, 
we  may  venture  to  say,  no  woman  was  ever  con- 
tent. As  a  child  in  her  father's  house,  even  to 
the  day  of  her  wedding,  she  had  been  by  custom 
entitled  to  a  living;  and,  by  custom  also,  as  a 
wife  she  had  a  right  to  a  reasonable  provision. 
But  just  when  she  could  afford  a  new  dress,  and 
how  much  money  for  her  personal  expenses  was 
to  be  forthcoming,  and  when,  she  did  not  know. 
It  was  considered  unnecessary,  indeed,  it  was 
scarcely  proper  for  a  wife  to  have  an  allowance 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE         35 

—  it  savored  of  quarrels  and  too  much  wifely  in- 
dependence— for  it  was  assumed  that  any  decent 
husband  would  provide  for  his  wife.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  experience,  the  wheedling  or  termagant 
wives  of  indulgent  husbands  got  more  than  they 
should  have,  in  a  proper  division  of  the  family 
income,  while  timid  and  more  self-respecting 
women  had  to  make  suffice  whatever  a  forgetful 
or  selfish  husband  irregularly  doled  out;  and 
often  wept  in  secret  humiliation  before  asking 
for  what  they  were  justly  entitled  to.  Although 
in  theory  the  wife  had  a  right  to  a  reasonable 
share  of  the  family  resources,  she  was,  neverthe- 
less, in  the  position  of  asking  for  it  like  a  child 
or  a  charity  dependent.  That  the  average  Amer- 
ican husband  was  generous  did  not  make  the  ar- 
rangement less  unjust,  though  it  might  prevent  the 
wife  from  insisting  on  a  more  equitable  and  self- 
respecting  division. 

But  if  the  mother  of  a  family  found  this  finan- 
cial tradition  irksome,  the  childless  wife — if  she 
thought  about  it  at  all — was  scarcely  able  to  keep 
her  self-respect.  While  she  earned  her  board 
and  lodging  generally,  and  often  the  wage  of  a 
servant,  if  she  did  the  whole  work  of  the  house- 
hold, she  was  at  least  in  a  position  of  relative 
dignity.  But  in  many  cases  the  married  partners 
took  advantage  of  cheap  immigrant  service  to 
lift  themselves  into  a  higher  social  stratum.  Thus 


36          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

released  from  the  heavier  portion  of  the  house- 
hold cares,  without  children,  without  intellectual 
tastes,  without  any  exacting  occupation,  she  had 
nothing  to  do  with  her  leisure  but  to  return  to  the 
superficial  accomplishments  of  her  girlhood,  or  to 
fill  the  time  with  social  engagements  and  the  pur- 
suit of  dress.  In  short,  she  made  something  to 
do,  instead  of  being  compelled  to  do  something 
necessary  to  the  household  and  worthy  of  a  human 
being. 

Some  wives,  under  this  social  regime,  became 
lazy,  frivolous,  and  extravagant;  others  de- 
veloped an  abnormal  devotion  to  the  petty  de- 
tails of  dress  and  housekeeping,  or  an  all  but  in- 
sane love  of  cleanliness,  of  order,  or  of  orna- 
ment; and  all  became  morally  and  physically 
anemic,  wreaking  on  their  partners  the  morbid 
peevishness  of  a  childish  and  discontented  disposi- 
tion. Now  and  then,  some  stronger  woman — 
with  or  without  the  approval  of  her  husband,  who 
could  not  be  expected  to  know  what  was  the  mat- 
ter— sought  in  lady-like  philanthropy  some  ex- 
pression of  the  pent-up  energy  within  her;  and 
rarely,  a  wiser  man  would  take  her  into  genuine 
partnership,  replacing  the  natural  tie  of  children 
with  a  useful  business  interest. 

When  the  initial  stages  of  marriage  had  settled 
themselves  more  or  less  comfortably,  the  great 
adventure  of  the  woman's  life  resolved  itself  into 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE          37 

a  journey  along  a  country  road,  sometimes  green 
and  shady,  sometimes  dusty  and  rough,  but  seldom 
affording  an  exciting  prospect.  Like  the  farmer, 
with  whose  labor  the  vocation  of  domesticity  has 
elsewhere  been  compared,  the  housewife  pursued 
her  unexciting  round;  or,  more  like  a  pet  squirrel 
in  a  cage — well-fed  and  cared-for,  but  debarred 
by  domestic  traditions  from  exploring  for  herself 
the  interesting  world  about  her.  All  her  knowl- 
edge was  second-hand,  so  to  speak,  filtered 
through  the  mind  of  a  partner  who  told  her  as 
much  or  as  little  as  he  thought  she  could  com- 
prehend; and  the  only  other  stimuli  that  were 
likely  to  reach  her  came  through  the  educational 
experiences  of  the  children  or  through  effeminate 
publications  filled  up  with  household  recipes  and 
a  little  harmless  stuff  predigested  for  feminine 
needs. 

The  intellectual  interests  of  married  women, 
like  those  of  most  persons,  are  dictated  by  their 
experiences  in  life — a  fact  upon  which  modern 
journalism  bases  its  principal  appeal.  The  racing 
edition  for  sporting  men;  the  yellow  newspaper 
for  crude  people,  who  live  wholly  on  sensations; 
the  semi-religious,  predigested  survey  of  current 
events  for  the  orthodox;  adventure  magazines 
with  a  few  "  hells  "  and  "  damns  "  to  catch  the 
drummer  and  the  cowboy — or  with  lurid  stories 
but  no  swear-words  for  those  who  like  Western 


38          THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

color,  but  are  shocked  by  the  real  thing — these, 
in  our  era,  are  some  of  the  thousand  kinds  for  as 
many  people.  But  before  the  Civil  War  there 
were  fewer  of  any  kind,  and  only  one  sort  deemed 
suitable  for  women. 

Whatever  her  taste,  the  journalistic  estimate 
of  woman's  needs  was  adjusted  to  the  kitchen- 
children-clothing-church  routine  of  the  ordinary 
woman's  life.  The  great  body  of  country  and 
village  housewives  read  the  weekly  county  paper, 
a  missionary  or  religious  journal,  and  the  Bible, 
regularly  but  quite  unthinkingly.  The  more 
sophisticated  read  a  Lady-Book,  in  which  was 
always  to  be  found  a  careful  mixture  of  feeble 
romance,  moral  essays,  cooking  recipes,  fashions, 
and  designs  for  needlework.  These  polite  maga- 
zines for  the  promotion  of  u  religion  and  gentil- 
ity "  had  for  their  aim  the  expression  of  "  the 
spirit  of  progress  without  compromising  true 
womanliness;  "  and  reached  large  circulations, 
owing  to  an  innocuous  mixture  of  platitudes, 
trivialities,  and  French  fashion  plates. 

Having  had  no  thorough  education  in  any  di- 
rection, the  ideally  domestic  woman  seldom  ac- 
quired a  taste  for  abstract  or  enlightened  in- 
formation. Her  idea  of  the  pleasure  of  reading 
was  to  get  the  practical  experience  of  other  house- 
wives on  such  matters  as  the  making  of  new 
variations  in  crochet  patterns  and  cake,  and  how 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE         39 

to  contrive  a  chair  out  of  old  barrel-staves;  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  fill  up  the  lack  of  the  pic- 
turesque and  dramatic  in  her  life  with  the  emo- 
tional adventures  of  some  immaculate  heroine  of 
fiction.  As  the  deer  comes  to  the  salt-lick;  as  the 
laborer,  doomed  to  repetitious  drudgery,  seeks 
variety  in  a  drunken  spree — so  the  domestic 
woman  often  found  in  her  leisure  hours  a  passive 
pseudo-excitement  in  romance.  In  much  the  same 
manner  the  modern  woman  of  leisure  satisfies  her 
natural  craving  for  adventurous  interests  with 
emotions  induced  by  the  theater  and  the  orchestra. 
A  modern  satirist  has  acutely  remarked  that, 
while  a  man  was  supposing  that  his  wife's  ideal  of 
a  husband  was  a  middle-aged,  baldheaded  man, 
who  was  a  good  provider,  his  wife  was  going  to 
the  matinee  to  adore  a  beautiful  young  man  with 
dark  eyes  and  a  tenor  voice. 

The  only  activity  outside  the  home  in  which 
married  women  might  take  part  without  violating 
the  proprieties,  was  the  support  and  promotion 
of  religious  work.  The  finances  and  the  admin- 
istration of  the  churches  were  in  the  hands  of 
men;  but  the  money  for  the  minister's  salary,  for 
a  new  church  carpet,  or  for  foreign  missions,  was 
commonly  raised  by  the  women  through  socials, 
fairs,  bees,  picnics,  suppers — where  hot  coffee  and 
good  pie  might  be  expected  to  unloose  masculine 
purse-strings.  Here  the  woman  of  executive  abil- 


40         THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE 

ity  found  a  chance  for  leadership;  here  house- 
wives exchanged  the  gossip  of  the  neighborhood, 
or  the  ingenuities  and  economies  by  which  they 
stretched  their  purses.  While  men  were  whet- 
ting their  minds  on  politics,  on  war  or  recon- 
struction, on  tariff  measures  or  the  panic,  and 
running  the  churches  and  the  local  government, 
women  revolved  within  the  narrow  circle  of  do- 
mestic and  pious  detail,  and  kept  silence  on 
larger  matters,  as  behooved  the  supplementary 
sex. 

The  conventional  domestic  ideal  involved,  as 
we  have  shown  in  a  previous  chapter,  a  girlhood 
spent  in  attaining  a  superficial  education  which 
had  no  direct  relation  to  domesticity  or  to  moth- 
erhood, and  an  early  womanhood  spent  chiefly  in 
preening  and  expectation.  With  such  a  prepara- 
tion it  was  not  surprising  if  women  generally 
found  marriage  less  romantic  and  less  satisfying 
as  a  career  than  they  had  been  led  to  anticipate. 
Instead  of  an  interesting  adventure  into  which 
they  were  to  be  led  by  the  sympathetic  and  ador- 
ing hero  of  their  dreams,  the  wife's  role  was  usu- 
ally that  of  an  understudy  for  a  leading  part  who 
never  got  a  chance  to  take  the  boards.  If,  per- 
chance, she  showed  dissatisfaction  with  her  lot, 
she  was  always  assured  that  motherhood  was  the 
only  worthy  career,  to  which  wifehood  and 
domesticity  were  merely  supplementary — mother- 


THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE         41 

hood  was  to  be  her  compensation.  To  a  consid- 
eration of  the  career  afforded  by  motherhood  we 
must  turn,  therefore,  if  we  would  understand  both 
the  glory  and  the  inadequacy  of  the  Nineteenth- 
Century  woman. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

"  There  is  an  African  bird,  the  hornbill,  whose  habits  in  some 
respects  are  a  model.  The  female  builds  her  nest  in  a  hollow 
tree,  lays  her  eggs,  and  broods  on  them.  Then  the  male  feels 
that  he  must  also  contribute  some  service;  so  he  walls  up  the 
hole  closely,  giving  only  room  for  the  point  of  the  female's  bill 
to  protrude.  Until  the  eggs  are  hatched,  she  is  thenceforth  con- 
fined to  her  nest,  and  is  in  the  meantime  fed  assiduously  by  her 
mate.  .  .  . 

"  Nature  has  kindly  provided  various  types  of  bird  households 
to  suit  all  varieties  of  taste.  The  bright  orioles  filling  the 
summer  boughs  with  color  and  with  song,  are  as  truly  domestic 
in  the  freedom  of  their  airy  nest  as  the  poor  hornbills  who  ig- 
norantly  make  their  home  in  a  dungeon.  And  certainly  each 
new  generation  of  orioles  .  .  .  are  a  happier  illustration  of 
judicious  nurture  than  are  the  uncouth  little  offspring  of  the 
hornbills  ...  so  flabby,  and  transparent  as  to  resemble  a 
bladder  of  jelly  furnished  with  head,  legs,  and  rudimentary 
wings,  but  with  not  a  sign  of  a  feather." — THOMAS  WENTWORTH 
HIGGINSON. 

"  It  is  a  fact  kept,  perhaps,  too  much  in  the  background,  that 
mothers  have  a  larger  self  than  their  maternity,  and  that  when 
their  sons  have  become  taller  than  themselves,  and  gone  from 
them  .  .  .  there  are  wide  spaces  of  time  which  are  not  filled 
with  praying  for  their  boys,  reading  old  letters,  and  envying 
yet  blessing  those  who  are  attending  to  their  shirt  buttons." — 
GEORGE  ELIOT. 

"  Woman  is  given  to  us  that  she  may  bear  children.  Woman 
is  our  property,  we  are  not  hers,  because  she  produces  children 
for  us — we  do  not  yield  any  to  her.  She  is,  therefore,  our  pos- 
session as  the  fruit  tree  is  that  of  the  gardener." — NAPOLEON. 

42 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    43 

MERELY  to  be  a  woman  is  not  a  vocation, 
though  formerly  many  women  were  obliged  by 
custom  to  make  it  serve  in  lieu  of  one;  but  to  be  a 
married  mother  has  long  been  regarded  as  a 
quasi-profession  which,  for  the  time  being,  pre- 
cluded any  other.  During  the  earlier  part  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  while  the  family  still  con- 
stituted an  industrial  unit,  child-bearing  was  inci- 
dental in  the  midst  of  pioneer  toil,  and  not  at  all 
the  subject  of  reasoning.  As  women  began  to  be 
released  from  directly  productive  labor,  and  here 
and  there  ventured  into  publicity,  there  grew  up 
in  the  Press  and  the  Pulpit  a  habit  of  lauding  the 
"  glory  "  of  motherhood  in  much  the  same  man- 
ner as  they  dwelt  upon  the  "  dignity  "  of  manual 
labor.  Any  thoughtful  person  could  see  that  the 
conditions  of  labor  were  often  inhuman  and  de- 
grading; and  no  one  who  could  escape  from  such 
toil  into  a  cleaner  and  easier  mode  of  living  was 
prevented  from  doing  so  by  his  belief  in  its  dig- 
nity. So,  also,  the  sentimentality  of  the  mid- 
century  was  accustomed  to  play  up  the  emotional 
and  spiritual  compensations  of  motherhood,  while 
ignoring  or  glozing  over  its  hardships. 

There  is  slight  need  of  writing  on  the  com- 
pensatory aspects  of  motherhood,  since  healthy, 
happy  mothers  in  every  age  have  been  satisfied 
with  their  lot,  and  have  not  needed  either  flattery 
or  a  fence  to  keep  them  within  their  sphere.  But 


44    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

many  mothers — perhaps  a  majority  in  the  past 
century — were  neither  contented  nor  adequate  to 
their^task.  That  they  did  not  attempt  to  escape 
was  chiefly  due  to  their  conventional  limitations. 
Without  discounting  in  any  degree  the  beauty  or 
the  rewards  of  normal  motherhood,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  point  out  how  far  short,  in  the  past,  the 
actual  experience  often  fell  of  that  ideal  so  con- 
stantly preached;  and  to  analyze  it  from  the  rea- 
sonable standpoint  of  the  career  for  which  it  was 
a  substitute.  If  motherhood  were,  indeed,  a  holy 
vocation,  for  which  women  had  been  set  apart,  it 
should  be  able  to  bear  the  tests  to  which  other 
less  sacred  occupations  were  subjected.  To  com- 
prehend why  the  conditions  of  motherhood  are 
still  so  far  from  what  they  should  be,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  draw  a  plain  picture  of  what  they  were 
for  the  average  woman  of  the  past  century. 

We  have  seen  in  the  chapter  on  Girlhood  that 
girls  were  very  early  imbued  with  the  idea  that 
they  did  not  need  to  equip  themselves  for  earning 
a  living,  nor  to  acquire  more  than  a  limited  and 
superficial  education,  because  they  were  to  be 
married  and,  by  inference,  to  be  mothers.  The 
Puritan  reaction  from  the  sensuality  of  English 
society  had  taken  the  form  of  prudery  and  silence 
on  sex  matters,  which  placed  every  marriageable 
girl  in  an  anomalous  situation.  Marriage  and 
motherhood  were  constantly  referred  to  in  her 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    45 

hearing  as  the  highest,  indeed,  the  only  succcess- 
ful,  career  for  woman;  yet,  nothing  in  her  train- 
ing had  any  direct  relation  to  it,  and  the  con- 
ventional standard  of  modesty  required  her  to  be 
wholly  ignorant  of  its  physical  aspects.  When 
she  walked  up  the  church  aisle  in  her  bridal  veil, 
she  must  be  as  innocent  in  mind  as  she  was  chaste 
in  body,  but  at  any  moment  after  the  marriage 
vows  were  spoken  she  might  know  everything. 
The  conventional  attitude  is  aptly  expressed  by 
Dorothea's  Uncle  in  Mlddlemarch,  when  he 
suggests  to  the  bridegroom  that  he  get  her  to  read 
him  "  light  things,  Smollett — Roderick  Random, 
Humphrey  Clinker;  they  are  a  little  broad,  but 
she  may  read  anything,  now  she's  married,  you 
know." 

Just  how  and  when  she  was  to  enter  upon 
motherhood  she  did  not  know,  but  if  she  per- 
mitted herself  to  think  of  it  at  all,  she  naturally 
supposed  that  she  would  at  least  have  some  choice 
as  to  the  convenient  season.  But  since  the  con- 
ventional training  of  girls  prescribed  that  she 
should  not  think  of  it  at  all,  the  conception  of  her 
first  child  was  almost  certainly  "  an  accident," 
neither  desired  nor  predetermined,  merely  inci- 
dental to  the  period  of  excitement,  fatigue,  and 
mixed  emotion  following  upon  the  wedding  dis- 
play and  the  honeymoon  tour.  Any  sturdy  and 
vulgar-minded  servant  maid  was  in  a  more 


46    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

natural  and  wholesome  state  of  mind  upon  her 
marriage  than  the  hyper-modest,  carefully  pro- 
tected daughter  of  the  house.  The  ignorant 
young  wife  waited  upon  her  fate  more  often  in 
fear  than  in  joy,  and  was,  not  infrequently,  the 
subject  of  jest  on  the  matter  of  her  pregnancy 
before  she  herself  learned  what  the  disturbance 
of  her  physical  rhythm  presaged. 

Though  she  might  look  forward  with  joy  to 
having  a  child  of  her  love,  the  lifelong  habits  of 
exaggerated  modesty  could  not  be  thrown  aside, 
but  were  rather  intensified  by  the  consciousness 
of  her  condition.  She  tried  to  conceal  it  as  long 
as  she  could  by  corsets  and  clothing  which  were 
injurious,  and  when  it  was  no  longer  possible  to 
hide  the  fact,  she  stayed  indoors  like  an  invalid, 
venturing  out  only  after  nightfall  or  in  a  carriage. 
Such  unhygienic  living  made  her  appetite  capri- 
cious and  her  temper  as  well;  robbed  her  muscles 
— undeveloped  enough  already — of  their  proper 
nutrition  and  exercise;  and  made  her  more  and 
more  unfit  for  the  severe  physical  test  of  child- 
birth. 

If  such  a  degree  of  ignorance  concerning  the 
facts  of  sex  be  thought  incredible,  one  has  only 
to  inquire  of  elderly  women  still  living,  or  to  read 
the  biographies  of  our  grandmothers,  to  know 
that  their  prudish  habits  were  maintained  through- 
out a  lifetime.  Their  code  did  not  permit  the 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    47 

mention  of  approaching  confinement  even  to 
their  female  relatives.  In  the  biography  of 
Susan  B.  Anthony  there  occurs  this  paragraph 
about  her  mother: 

"  Lucy  Read  Anthony  was  of  a  very  timid  and  reticent 
disposition,  and  painfully  modest  and  shrinking.  Before 
the  birth  of  every  child  she  was  overwhelmed  with  em- 
barrassment and  humiliation,  secluded  herself  from  the 
outside  world,  and  would  not  speak  of  the  expected  little 
one  even  to  her  mother.  The  mother  would  assist  her 
over-burdened  daughter  by  making  the  necessary  garments, 
take  them  to  her  home,  and  lay  them  away  carefully  in  a 
drawer,  but  no  word  of  acknowledgment  ever  passed 
between  them." 

And  yet  Lucy  Read  Anthony  was  set  down  as  a 
very  "  happy  wife  and  mother,"  and  her  husband 
was  an  exceptionally  kind  and  generous  man. 

Before  the  end  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  the 
physical  poverty  and  nervousness  of  American 
women  had  become  a  matter  of  serious  concern. 
Medical  men  were  searching  for  subtle  causes, 
while  all  the  time  a  perfectly  patent  group  of 
causes  were  only  vaguely  recognized.  It  was  still 
the  fashion  to  attribute  all  the  weaknesses  of 
women  to  their  inherent  nature,  rather  than  to 
look  for  their  origin  in  social  convention  and 
inactivity.  When  one  realizes  how  widespread 
was  the  ideal  of  girlish  delicacy  half  a  century 
ago,  the  wonder  is  that  any  wife  who  had  been 


48    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

brought  up  under  the  restrictions  of  that  period, 
survived  to  bear  more  than  a  single  child.  Per- 
haps all  that  saved  them  was  the  necessity  of 
caring  for  the  child  itself,  and  sometimes  of  do- 
ing their  own  housework. 

It  was  the  husband's  exclusive  privilege  to 
initiate  the  innocent  girl  whom  he  married  into 
the  mysteries  of  the  sex  relation.  The  only  other 
information  regarding  motherhood  that  she  re- 
ceived was  usually  obtained  after  conception  from 
her  mother  and  the  neighbor  women.  This 
mother-lore  was  a  mixture  of  old  women's  tradi- 
tions and  midwives'  quackery  handed  down  from 
one  generation  to  another,  and  the  prospective 
mother's  sensitive  organization  was  stimulated 
with  the  details  of  miscarriages,  premature  deliv- 
eries, still-births,  and  all  the  sensational  symp- 
toms within  their  experience.  During  the  later 
months  of  pregnancy  she  remained  altogether  in- 
doors, more  often  than  not,  waiting  from  day  to 
day  in  a  state  of  terror  for  labor  to  begin. 

The  thought  that  a  strange  man  would  attend 
her  at  childbirth  added  to  her  shrinking,  and  often 
caused  her  to  prefer  the  services  of  a  self-trained 
midwife,  whose  ignorance  of  obstetrical  practice 
and  hygiene  might  leave  her  a  semi-wreck  for  life. 
Aside  from  her  own  undeveloped  physique,  the 
lack  of  properly  trained  attendants  of  her  own 
sex  was  unquestionably  a  considerable  factor  in 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    49 

the  preventable  miseries  from  which  many  a  child- 
bearing  woman  suffered. 

When  she  was  on  her  feet  again,  and  before 
she  had  fully  recovered  her  strength,  she  was 
confronted  with  a  new  duty,  for  which  she  had 
had  no  preparation  whatever,  unless  she  herself 
had  been  an  elder  daughter  in  a  large  family. 
If  she  were  able  to  nurse  her  child,  she  was  for- 
tunate, but  if  not — as  often  happened — she  en- 
tered upon  a  period  of  almost  sleepless  vigilance 
to  keep  alive  the  precious  creature  who  had  al- 
ready cost  her  so  much.  For  her  task  of  nurse 
she  was  as  unfitted  as  she  had  been  unprepared 
for  marriage.  In  her  day  there  were  no  specialist 
treatises  on  the  care  and  feeding  of  infants,  nor 
trained  nurses  at  call,  to  supply  her  deficiencies 
and  to  teach  her  how  to  care  for  her  baby.  The 
polite  education  in  music,  French,  and  the  rise 
and  fall  of  European  kingdoms,  of  which  she  had 
been  so  proud,  had  small  application  seemingly 
to  the  problems  of  nutrition  and  bacteriology 
which  must  be  solved.  And  no  blame  could  fall 
on  so  conscientious  and  inadequate  a  mother  if, 
after  weeks  of  exacting  care,  the  poor  little  life 
flickered  out. 

The  child-bearing  woman  of  the  past  century 
was,  indeed,  the  victim  of  the  traditions  of  her 
time,  which  had  predestined  her  to  physical  weak- 
ness, sexual  ignorance,  and  incompetence  in  the 


50    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

only  career  which  was  open  to  her.  Nor  did  she 
alone  pay  the  cost.  In  every  large  family  there 
was  a  miscarriage  or  an  infant  death  for  every 
two  or  three  children  that  survived  to  adult  years. 
The  physical  exhaustion,  the  sorrow,  and  the  dis- 
ruption of  the  family  comfort  in  such  infant 
losses,  cannot  be  measured  in  economic  terms,  but 
were  none  the  less  costly  to  society. 

If  the  young  mother  were  vigorous  enough  to 
endure  repeated  pregnancies  at  intervals  of  fif- 
teen or  twenty  months,  she  gradually  learned  her 
business  and  outlived  some  of  her  maiden  fears 
and  griefs,  as  all  her  powers  were  drawn  upon 
by  the  demands  of  a  growing  family.  There  is  a 
curious  literature  of  what  might  be  called  "  tired 
motherhood "  hidden  away  in  old  albums  and 
the  quaint  magazines  which  constituted  family 
reading  from  1840  to,  1880.  In  one  of  these  vol- 
umes, printed  as  late  as  1872,  there  is  a  series  of 
articles  on  the  "  Physical  Life  of  Women,"  which, 
in  process  of  giving  good  advice,  affords  a  picture 
of  the  ordinary  mother's  life. 

"  She  cannot  be  sick — there  is  no  one  to  care  for  her  if 
she  is;  on  the  contrary,  the  whole  family  feel  injured  be- 
cause their  comfort  is  disturbed  and  their  habits  of  de- 
pendence upon  '  Mother '  broken  in  upon.  .  .  .  She  grows 
nervous  and  irritable  .  .  .  she  has  little  time  for  senti- 
ment, but  she  is  shocked  sometimes  to  find  how  all  light 
and  sunshine  seem  gradually  fading  out  of  her  life.  .  .  . 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    51 

"The  children!  Ah,  well,  children  are  a  well-spring 
of  pleasure  when  the  house  is  wide,  the  purse  long,  and 
the  welcome  warm;  but  how  is  it  when  they  represent  so 
many  pairs  of  worn-out  shoes,  an  ever-ascending  pile  of 
unending  stockings,  continually  recurring  questions  of  hats, 
and  suits,  and  aprons,  and  innumerable  other  articles  of 
clothing,  which  not  only  have  to  be  made,  but  made  over 
with  every  changing  season  and  every  addition  to  the  in- 
creasing family.  .  .  . 

"  She  is  aware  that  her  husband  secretly  chafes  at  the 
change  in  her  appearance,  and  is  growing  indifferent  to  her 
under  the  combined  influence  of  family  responsibility  and 
the  occasional  experience  of  bitterness  prompted  by  her 
own  soreness  of  heart.  She  cannot  make  him  understand 
how  the  bright,  sunny-tempered  girl  whom  he  married  is 
dying  by  inches,  leaving  a  careworn,  joyless  woman  in  her 
place!  And  so  she  goes  on  her  hurried,  yet  monotonous 
way,  each  day  repeating  itself,  until  some  morning  she  is 
obliged  to  take  time  to  die  and  be  buried." 

Even  when  the  house  was  wide,  the  purse  long, 
and  the  welcome  warm  to  each  successive  child, 
many  a  tired  mother  must  have  felt  like  Samuel 
Sewall,  the  Colonial  father,  who  hoped,  when  his 
fourteenth  child  was  born,  that  "  The  Lord  would 
think  that  was  enough."  For,  consider  the  daily 
round  of  the  mother  of  even  a  moderate  family 
of  five  children — the  actual  physical  labor  in- 
volved in  merely  feeding  and  clothing  them,  and 
attending  to  their  toilet.  A  man  who  had  seen 
a  woman  contractor  in  a  Southwestern  city  down 
in  a  ditch,  showing  a  laborer  how  to  lay  sewer 


52    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

pipe,  remarked  thoughtfully  that,  perhaps,  it  was 
not  any  more  disagreeable  than  the  sanitary  duties 
of  the  mother  of  a  household.  Consider  the  in- 
cessantness  of  children — their  questions  and  cry- 
ings,  their  demands  and  naughtiness,  all  of  which 
must  be  patiently  and  kindly  and  wisely  attended 
to  by  the  competent  mother.  The  typical  father, 
who  spent  most  of  his  waking  hours  outside  the 
house,  saw  only  their  pleasant  qualities,  and  sel- 
dom experienced  to  the  full  the  monotony  of  their 
importunity  and  distraction.  A  delightful  mother 
of  my  acquaintance  was  accustomed  to  invite  her 
friends  to  visit  her  only  in  the  evening,  because, 
as  she  said,  "  I  am  only  a  human  being  after  the 
children  are  asleep;"  and  another  healthy  mother 
of  three  vigorous  youngsters  used  to  say  that 
Heaven  was  to  her  a  place  where  she  could  sleep 
as  long  as  she  wished. 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  in  the  intervals 
of  baby-tending  and  child-rearing,  the  typical 
country  house-mother  of  the  past  century  expected 
to  do  the  larger  part  of  the  housework  without 
the  aid  of  any  of  the  modern  conveniences;  cook- 
ing and  dishwashing  without  running  water  in  the 
house;  washing  of  clothes  without  set  tubs  and 
washing-powders;  ironing  of  garments — for  it 
would  have  been  slovenly  to  leave  them  "  rough 
dry  " — without  electric  and  gas  devices.  Miss 
Anthony  recorded  in  her  Life  and  Letters  how 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    53 

the  young  married  women  who  were  interested 
in  women's  rights,  and  anti-slavery,  and  temper- 
ance, dropped  out  of  the  work  as  soon  as  they 
were  caught  in  the  "matrimonial  maelstrom;" 
and  she  remarked  in  a  letter  to  one  of  them:  "  If 
you  allowed  yourself  to  remain  too  long  snuggled 
in  the  Abrahamic  bosom  of  home,  it  required 
great  will  power  to  resurrect  your  soul." 

During  the  infancy  of  her  children,  the  mother 
had  very  little  life  of  her  own,  but,  if  she  were  a 
happy  wife,  found  her  compensation  for  her  per- 
sonal sacrifices  in  the  satisfaction  of  the  maternal 
passion  and  in  the  unfolding  intelligence  of  the 
children.  One  by  one  they  left  her  to  go  to 
school,  and  began  to  bring  home  new  ideas;  these 
furnished  excitement  and  incentive  to  her  vicari- 
ous ambition,  and  throughout  their  childhood 
years  provided  the  chief  stimulus  of  the  mother's 
life.  But  by  so  much  as  their  opportunities  were 
better  than  hers  had  been,  they  began  to  outstrip 
her  intellectually.  For  beyond  the  three  R's  her 
education  had  not  only  been  useless,  but  it  had  not 
even  taught  her  to  think  for  herself,  nor  incul- 
cated a  taste  for  serious  reading  and  information. 
When  the  smaller  children  wanted  help  in  the 
solution  of  some  arithmetical  problem,  or  in  the 
construction  of  a  composition,  she  found  herself 
too  rusty,  if  not  too  ignorant,  and  covered  up  her 
chagrin  with  an  excuse  of  busy-ness. 


54    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

By  the  time  the  boys  were  in  trousers,  and  the 
girls  in  long  skirts,  they  had  found  out  that  their 
mother's  ideas  were  not  only  old-fashioned,  but 
often  foolish.  In  the  family  discussions  on  public 
events  they  saw  that  their  father  had  no  respect 
for  her  opinions,  though  he  might  receive  them 
with  polite  tolerance.  The  mother's  mind,  hav- 
ing been  for  years  wholly  absorbed  in  household 
and  maternal  details,  gradually  lost  the  power 
to  be  interested  in  impersonal  topics.  Her  con- 
versation became  inconsequential,  and  she  was, 
as  a  rule,  quite  incapable  of  concentrating  her- 
self for  any  length  of  time  upon  a  single  idea. 
The  distinguishing  mental  characteristic  of  the 
domestic,  especially  of  the  maternal  woman,  came 
to  be  heterogeneity.  The  necessity  every  mother 
was  under  of  giving  her  mind  simultaneously  to 
a  great  variety  of  childish  and  domestic  demands, 
all  day  long  and  for  years  together,  produced  a 
habit  of  mental  scrappiness.  Having  -herself 
been  interrupted  incessantly,  she  had  no  hesitation 
in  breaking  in  upon  any  talk  or  reading  with  ir- 
relevant questions  and  comments.  If  proof  were 
needed,  one  need  only  contemplate  the  intellectual 
attempts  of  certain  middle-aged  clubwoman  who 
are  trying  to  regain,  after  a  life  of  distracting 
domestic  detail,  the  power  to  think  intelligently 
on  wider  subjects. 

In  most  cases  the  mother  developed  the  charac- 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    55 

teristic  female  virtues  essential  to  family  peace — 
industry,  patience,  devotion  to  physical  comfort, 
sympathy  with  petty  griefs,  discomforts,  and  ail- 
ments, and,  above  all,  unselfishness — to  an  exag- 
gerated degree,  and,  in  the  process,  lost  sight  of 
the  larger  values.  The  children,  therefore,  how- 
ever they  might  depend  upon  her  affection  and 
sacrifice,  discounted  her  opinions.  The  boys  were 
apt  to  become  unruly  before  they  reached  the  age 
of  puberty,  and  had  to  be  turned  over  to  their 
father  in  the  hope  that  he  might  instil  good  be- 
havior, if  not  respect,  by  his  technically  greater 
authority.  The  half-grown  girls  were  likely  to 
begin  to  model  themselves  upon  the  pattern  of 
some  younger,  more  attractive  woman,  less  care- 
worn and  old-fashioned  than  their  mother. 

If,  perchance,  by  the  unselfishness  and  sweet- 
ness of  her  character,  she  still  was  able  to  keep 
their  confidence,  she  might  remain  the  confidante 
of  their  troubles  and  ambitions,  though  without 
the  ability  to  be  a  trustworthy  and  intelligent 
guide.  Like  the  hen  who  hatched  ducklings,  she 
saw  them  swim  away,  though  she  could  not  swim 
herself.  Some  day,  when  they  were  married  and 
had  children  of  their  own,  they  might  begin  to 
appreciate,  in  the  light  of  their  own  experiences, 
what  they  owed  to  their  mother;  but  in  propor- 
tion as  they  developed  beyond  her,  they  would 
also  rate  her  at  her  true  social  value,  in  spite  of 


56    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

all  affection.  For  gratitude  grows  only  in  rich 
soil,  and  filial  piety  is  apt  to  flower  only  in  pro- 
portion to  the  quality  of  parental  culture. 

If  the  husband  and  father  were  a  man  who,  by 
virtue  of  integrity,  justice,  and  gentleness,  com- 
manded the  willing  obedience  of  his  children,  he 
enforced  upon  them  respectful  behavior  toward 
their  mother,  no  matter  how  limited  or  undeserv- 
ing she  might  be.  But  if,  as  sometimes  happened, 
the  titular  head  of  the  family  were  lazy,  incapable, 
eccentric,  or  drunken,  the  competent  mother's 
position  became  well-nigh  intolerable.  She  must 
obey  her  husband — by  law  of  Church  and  State — 
and  she  must  continue  to  bear  children  to  a  man 
whose  superior  she  knew  herself  to  be,  but  with- 
out authority  to  enforce  even  nominal  respect  and 
obedience  upon  them.  Thus  motherhood  might 
become  a  sort  of  doom. 

On  the  other  hand,  according  to  the  standard 
of  the  time,  there  was  no  woman  so  petty,  so 
vain,  so  enfeebled  in  body  or  mind,  that  she 
might  not  become  the  wife  of  an  intelligent  and 
honorable  man  and,  hanging  like  a  dead-weight 
upon  him,  become  the  incompetent  mother  of 
puny  children.  A  society  which  was  shocked  at 
a  female  preacher  or  painter  or  doctor,  com- 
placently acquiesced  in  the  tradition  that  any 
woman  was  good  enough  to  be  a  mother,  if  only 
she  wore  a  wedding-ring.  The  convenient  theory 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    57 

handed  down  from  licentious  ages,  that  parent- 
hood was  both  inevitable  and  praiseworthy,  what- 
ever the  qualifications  of  the  progenitors,  reduced 
some  wives  to  the  position  of  mistresses,  without 
any  of  the  advantages  of  that  more  independent 
position. 

The  teaching  of  the  clergy  that  all  children 
came  from  God,  and  that  the  man  who  begot  the 
greatest  number  was  a  benefactor  to  the  State, 
was,  in  fact,  left  over  from  an  age  when  the 
survival  of  a  State  might  depend  upon  the  capacity 
of  its  women  to  replace  those  fallen  in  war.  Aside 
from  the  fact  that  the  less  intelligent  a  popula- 
tion is,  the  more  recklessly  it  will  breed,  the  con- 
ditions of  rural  life  in  America  demanded 
abundant  child  labor.  The  farmer's  daughter 
stood  on  a  stool  to  wash  dishes,  made  patch- 
work quilts,  and  acted  as  a  "  little  mother  "  to 
the  younger  children;  while  boys,  from  the  time 
they  were  ten  years  old,  earned  their  "  keep  "  by 
chores  and  the  lighter  farm  labor. 

Children  were  then  an  economic  asset.  Fol- 
lowing the  English  tradition,  the  prosperous 
American  farmer  of  the  earlier  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury often  retired  from  active  labor  at  fifty  or 
fifty-five,  allowing  his  wife  and  his  numerous 
progeny  to  support  him.  By  custom  the  children 
who  went  from  home  to  work  turned  their  wages 
over  to  their  parents  until  they  were  of  age,  and 


58    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

expected  nothing  more  than  a  "  setting-out  "  when 
they  left  home  permanently.  In  such  a  society, 
the  more  children  there  were,  provided,  always, 
they  were  vigorous,  the  richer  the  parents. 

The  statistics  of  the  period  do  not  afford  any 
trustworthy  information  of  the  death-rate  of 
married  women;  but,  indirectly,  the  family  his- 
tories of  the  time  reveal  an  unusual  number  of 
second  and  even  third  wives.  There  is  abundant 
evidence  that  the  large  family  of  which  we  read 
so  much  was  often  produced  at  the  cost  of  the 
first  wife's  life.  Even  when  the  mother  of  a  large 
family  outlived  puerperal  fevers,  lacerations,  and 
the  exhaustion  of  rapidly  succeeding  pregnancies, 
it  was  not — as  we  often  assume — to  enjoy  a  vigor- 
ous, intelligent  old-womanhood,  but  in  a  state  of 
premature  decrepitude,  similar  to  that  of  women 
among  primitive  races.  In  fact,  we  need  only 
take  account  of  the  increasing  youthfulness  of 
middle-aged  women  to  infer  that  many  men  as 
well  as  women  have  begun  to  count  the  cost  of 
parenthood  as  measured  by  a  rising  standard  of 
child  quality  and  child  care. 

In  an  economic  estimate  of  motherhood  as 
a  vocation,  it  must  be  remembered  that  this 
"  career "  became  anomalous  only  when  wives 
ceased  to  do  anything  of  value,  except  child- 
bearing.  So  long  as  married  women  were  pro- 
ducers and  manufacturers  in  their  own  homes, 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    59 

they  needed  no  other  justification  in  the  eyes  of 
their  husbands  or  society,  whether  they  bore  many 
or  few  children.  When,  however,  they  became 
relatively  idle  and  unproductive,  as  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  last  century,  the  sole  claim  they  could 
make  for  accepting  a  parasitic  existence,  lay  in 
motherhood.  Yet  for  this  their  feeble  physique 
and  childish  mentality  had  in  great  measure  un- 
fitted them;  while,  at  the  same  time,  children 
themselves  had  become  less  an  asset  and  more  of 
a  privilege — or  of  a  burden,  from  another  stand- 
point— because  they  must  be  supported,  educated, 
and  launched  in  life  upon  a  much  higher  plane. 

The  confusion  involved  in  the  purely  senti- 
mental estimate  of  motherhood  was  produced  by 
such  discordant  ideas  as  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of 
women  to  posterity;  the  dependence  of  women, 
whether  mothers  or  not,  upon  men;  and  their  im- 
plied release  from  economic  and  social  responsi- 
bility. Toward  the  end  of  the  century  the  cost 
of  such  a  mixed  system  became  apparent.  For 
the  traditions  of  the  home-seeking  and  home- 
keeping  woman  reacted  almost  as  disastrously 
upon  husbands  and  fathers  as  upon  women.  Men 
were  encouraged  in  reckless  paternity — for  what 
else  was  a  woman  good  for  aside  from  the  sex- 
relation  and  motherhood !  Since  home  was  the 
woman's  sphere,  the  husband  felt  himself  re- 
lieved from  all  responsibility  when  he  had  ful- 


60    THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

filled  his  own  notion  of  being  a  good  provider. 
He  betook  himself  of  an  evening  to  the  village 
store  on  a  plea  of  business,  or  to  the  neighboring 
town,  leaving  his  wife  to  the  doubtful  amusement 
of  gossip  and  the  weekly  prayer  meeting.  He 
saw  no  reason  for  keeping  his  wife's  mind  alive 
by  drawing  her  into  the  circle  of  his  own  broader 
interests,  because  he  had  been  brought  up  to  sup- 
pose that  she  had  only  a  puny  intellect,  and  it 
would  be  of  no  use  to  her  anyway.  Not  until  the 
children  were  old  enough  to  be  interesting  in 
themselves  did  he  take  much  account  of  them 
beyond  performing  his  financial  and  disciplinary 
duties.  In  consequence  of  this  complete  division 
of  interests  and  duties,  the  fathers  and  sons,  and 
the  mothers  and  daughters  in  any  town  or  neigh- 
borhood, constituted  social  cliques  separated  by 
a  sex-convention  analogous  to  race-prejudice. 
And  each  clique  had  a  sort  of  racial  contempt 
for  the  ideas  of  the  other,  which  was  a  common 
subject  of  mutual  jests. 

Hardly  did  the  busy  mother  and  wife  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  reach  the  mid-plateau  of  her 
life  and  begin  to  rest  a  little  from  absorbing 
family  cares,  when  the  second  great  apprehension 
of  her  life  would  begin  to  creep  upon  her.  The 
children  grown  up,  married,  and  gone  away;  the 
finances  of  the  household  eased,  making  hard 
work  and  strict  economy  no  longer  necessary;  she 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD    61 

feared  to  find  herself  gradually  isolated,  and  of 
less  and  less  use.  She,  who  had  been  important 
to  several,  was  now  reduced  to  petting  her  grand- 
children, seeing  that  all  her  husband's  tastes  were 
indulged,  reviving  the  semi-ornamental  handi- 
crafts of  her  youth,  gossiping  over  the  tea-table 
with  other  capable,  restless  middle-aged  ladies  as 
busily  idle  as  herself — striving  to  pass  from  wife- 
hood  to  old  age.  Coerced  by  the  tradition  cur- 
rent among  women  that  she  must  be  physically 
miserable  at  the  time  of  the  climacteric,  and  mor- 
bidly afraid  that  her  husband  would  not  continue 
to  love  her,  she  wore  out  the  last  years  of  her 
potential  motherhood  in  teaching  herself  to  be 
semi-idle,  and  accustoming  herself  to  be  "  laid  on 
the  shelf."  With  so  little  worth  while  to  do,  and 
twenty  or  thirty  years  yet  to  do  it  in,  she  descended 
prematurely  upon  the  tiresome  road  to  her  grave. 
If  she  lived  out  the  allotted  span  of  years,  they 
were  passed  swathed  in  mourning  for  those  who 
had  gone  before;  as  a  widow,  perhaps  living 
round  in  the  houses  of  one  child  or  another,  whose 
more  modern  habits  left  her  behind;  losing 
through  inertia  the  last  ray  of  the  brightness  of 
her  maidenhood,  and  cherishing  pitifully  the 
motherhood  which  had  given  her  life  its  only  pro- 
found meaning.  To  the  end  the  glory  of  mother- 
hood remained  her  pride  and  comfort.  Whether 
her  later  years  proved  busy  with  grandmotherly 


62      THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

cares,  or  merely  wasted  away  in  the  futile  busy- 
ness of  old-womanhood,  she  had,  at  any  rate,  ful- 
filled the  appointed  destiny  of  her  sex  in  achiev- 
ing marriage  and  children.  Even  if  the  man  had 
been  a  bad  husband,  and  though  some  of  the  chil- 
dren turned  out  poor  human  specimens,  she  had, 
nevertheless,  justified  her  own  existence. 

For  practical  purposes  in  life  the  Universe  is 
no  larger  than  the  limits  of  perception.  The  fly 
sees  no  farther  than  the  infinitesimal  radius  of  his 
vision,  and  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  huge  thing 
beyond  it;  the  dog  exists  to  follow  his  nose;  and 
the  doves  that  cross  the  Mediterranean  beat  them- 
selves to  death  against  the  snares  of  men.  So  it 
has  been  with  womankind,  whose  nature  in  the 
course  of  evolution  has  been  restricted  to  the 
narrow  demands  of  an  inner  domestic  circle  whose 
periphery  has  been  constantly  expanded  by  man. 

The  zoologists  are  well  aware  that  in  spite  of 
every  care  the  higher  animals  will  rarely  breed 
in  captivity — yet  womankind  is  expected  to  do  so 
successfully.  Not  a  little  of  the  growing  dis- 
content of  women  with  their  lot  in  the  past  cen- 
tury arose  from  the  unformulated  but  justifiable 
resentments  of  those  elected  to  be  mothers.  In 
proportion  as  they  were  intelligent  they  knew 
themselves  the  victims  of  a  sort  of  social  pre- 
tense; the  solemn  talk  about  the  "glory  of 
motherhood  "  and  the  "  only  worthy  sphere  " 


THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD      63 

was  by  no  means  always  borne  out  by  the  facts. 
Motherhood  was,  indeed,  glorious  when  joyously 
and  intelligently  undertaken;  and,  as  a  career, 
worthy  of  the  best  ambition  and  much  sacrifice 
when  the  parents  were  equally  yoked  to  bear  the 
load,  and  the  mother  fit  for  her  share  of  it.  But 
in  many  instances  the  mothers  had  been  led  to 
marry  by  the  deceiving  glamor  of  love,  while  lit- 
tle more  than  children  themselves  in  physique 
and  mind,  and  while  wholly  ignorant  of  the  seri- 
ous import  of  that  to  which  they  committed  them- 
selves; and  in  so  doing  they  had  been  placed  ab- 
solutely at  the  mercy  of  the  man  who  only  nom- 
inally guaranteed  them  support. 

The  mother,  even  in  her  best  estate,  knew  her- 
self a  sort  of  charitable  dependent;  and  it  is  to 
the  credit  of  men  that  they  were  so  often  more 
generous  than  law  and  social  custom.  Yet  the 
logical  result  of  a  social  arrangement  which,  in 
the  guise  of  protection,  afforded  an  opportunity 
for  outrage  or  neglect,  could  only  be  resentment 
and  ultimately  protest,  on  the  part  of  married 
women.  The  startling  proposals  of  the  present 
day,  the  transition  from  unalterable  wedlock  to 
more  and  more  divorce,  the  resistance  of  many 
women  to  involuntary  motherhood;  the  entrance 
of  protected  women  into  wage-earning  occupa- 
tions; these  and  many  other  symptoms  are 
phases  of  evolution  engendered  in  part  by  the 


64      THE  CAREER  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

hiatus  between  the  high  rank  which  women  be- 
lieved motherhood  should  hold,  and  the  realities 
of  married  women's  lives  in  the  past  generation. 
If  it  be  thought  that  too  dark  a  picture  has 
been  drawn,  let  it  be  compared  with  the  educated 
and  relatively  competent  motherhood  of  the  pres- 
ent day.  Among  younger  women  there  are  not  a 
few — though  still  too  few — who,  after  a  thorough 
education,  became  engaged  to  men  whom  they  had 
known  in  college  or  in  industry.  Taking  their 
future  task  as  mothers  and  wives  intelligently  and 
seriously,  they  informed  themselves  on  sex- 
hygiene  and  the  care  of  children.  For  the  mar- 
riage ceremony  they  chose  a  period  of  highest 
health,  declining  to  make  a  public  display.  Dur- 
ing the  months  of  gestation  they  developed  their 
muscles  in  anticipation  of  childbirth,  putting  them- 
selves in  training  as  for  a  race,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  physician.  Often  overcoming  their  own 
hereditary  weakness,  they  have  brought  lusty, 
much-desired  children  into  the  world,  whose  phys- 
ical and  mental  development  they  are  capable  of 
directing.  Such  motherhood  may  well  be  called 
a  worthy  career,  and  the  joys  and  glory  of  it  only 
bring  into  darker  contrast  the  childish,  unpre- 
pared, enfeebled  motherhood  of  the  times  whose 
legacy  of  miserable  children  and  unhappy  homes 
has  not  yet  passed  away. 


CHAPTER  IV 
DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

"  Woman's  work  is  a  round  of  endless  detail.  Little,  insig- 
nificant, provoking  items,  that  she  gets  no  credit  for  doing,  but 
fatal  discredit  for  leaving  undone.  Nobody  notices  that  things 
are  as  they  should  be;  but  if  things  are  not  as  they  should  be, 
it  were  better  for  her  that  a  mill-stone  were  hanged  about  her 
neck.  ...  A  woman  who  is  satisfied  with  the  small  economies, 
the  small  interests,  the  constant  contemplation  of  the  small 
things  which  a  household  demands,  is  a  very  small  sort  of 
woman.  ...  A  noble  discontent,  not  a  peevish  complaining,  but 
a  universal  and  spontaneous  protest,  is  a  woman's  safeguard 
against  the  deterioration  which  such  a  life  threatens ;  her  proof 
of  capacity  and  her  note  of  preparation  for  a  higher." — GAIL 
HAMILTON. 

"  That's  what  makes  women  a  curse — all  life  is  stunted  to 
their  littleness." — From  Felix  Holt,  GEORGE  ELIOT. 

"  Any  industry,  task,  or  occupation  that  deforms  the  hand  and 
hollows  the  chest,  mars  the  features  and  destroys  the  beauty, 
the  health  and  self-respect  of  the  workers — that  makes  them 
indifferent  and  careless  to  their  personal  appearance  and  clean- 
liness— is  unprofitable,  both  for  the  worker  and  for  the  com- 
munity. .  .  .  Any  form  of  woman's  work,  whether  in  the  home 
or  out  of  it,  that  produces  similar  results  will  soon  come  under 
the  ban  .  .  .  whether  that  work  be  the  slavery  of  the  factory 
or  the  shop,  the  drudgery  of  the  household,  excessive  child- 
bearing,  or  the  slavish  care  of  more  children  than  can  be 
properly  supported  and  given  a  civilized  chance  with  the  means 
at  her  disposal." — WOODS  HUTCHINSON. 

IN  the  making  of  a  human  being  there  are  three 
variables — what  he  was  when  he  came  into  the 

65 


66     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

world,  what  he  found  there,  and  what  he  made  of 
it  and  of  himself  when  he  grew  up.  Boys  and 
girls,  if  not  precisely  alike  in  the  beginning,  were 
probably  substantially  equal,  the  advantage  of 
greater  size  in  the  one  being  made  up  in  the  other 
by  finer  nervous  organization  and  endurance. 
What  each  sex  found  in  our  American  world  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century  was,  however,  very  dif- 
ferent; for  social  tradition  ordained  a  wide  dif- 
ferentiation in  nurture  and  habit,  which  was 
justified  in  theory  by  the  sex-specialization  of  fe- 
males. Neither  the  education  nor  the  duties  of 
girls,  in  spite  of  their  special  function,  prepared 
them  in  any  direct  fashion  for  motherhood; 
rather,  they  were  consciously  designed  to  fit  them 
to  be  domestic  servers  and  housekeepers. 

There  had  been  a  time  in  history  not  long  past, 
when  the  choice  of  a  vocation  was  confined  to 
certain  occupations  open  to  the  class  in  which 
men  happened  to  be  born,  but  in  the  new  democ- 
racy every  field  was  at  least  nominally  open  to 
any  man.  Women,  meanwhile,  whether  married 
or  not,  whether  likely  to  be  mothers  or  not,  were 
still  limited  to  the  group  of  occupations  which 
could  be  carried  on  under  the  home  roof.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  last  century  these  comprised 
a  variety  of  crafts  and  manufactures,  but  in  the 
course  of  fifty  years  the  sphere  of  the  domestic 
countrywoman  was  coming  to  be  limited  to  a 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     67 

few  miscellaneous  and  belated  trades,  which  were 
still  assigned  to  women  merely  because  they  were 
performed  within  the  household. 

Although  it  continued  to  be  assumed  that  the 
static  and  limited  condition  of  women  was  due 
chiefly  to  their  primary  function  as  mothers  and 
nurses,  an  analysis  of  these  purely  domestic  lives 
will  show  that  a  relatively  small  portion  of 
women's  time  and  energy  was  spent  in  actual 
mothering.  Less  than  half  the  fifty  years  of  her 
adult  life  were  so  consumed  by  the  average 
woman;  and  in  all  but  the  largest  families  the 
wife  actually  occupied  more  hours  per  day  in 
washing  and  laundry  work  than  in  the  care  of 
children.  If  the  capacity  to  bear  children  had 
in  fact  incapacitated  women  for  other  physical  ex- 
ertion to  the  extent  that  it  was  always  assumed 
it  did  whenever  women  wished  to  do  anything 
outside  the  home,  most  families  would  have 
lacked  food,  clothing,  and  comfort  for  long 
periods  of  time. 

From  six  to  twelve  children  were  born  during 
twenty  years  to  the  average  wife,  and  during 
those  years  she  did  most  of  the  labor  of  the 
household,  including  a  good  deal  of  manufactur- 
ing now  done  in  factories,  with  only  such  help  as 
the  older  children  could  give.  The  life  of  my 
own  grandmother  was  typical  of  that  of  many  an- 
other well-to-do  farmer's  wife  between  1825  and 


68     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

1875,  and  an  almost  exact  counterpart  of  that  of 
Lucy  Read  Anthony,  as  described  by  her 
daughter. 

"  Lucy  Anthony  soon  became  acquainted  with  the  stern 
realities  of  life.  Her  third  baby  was  born  when  the  first 
was  three  years  and  two  months  old.  That  summer  she 
boarded  eleven  factory  hands  who  roomed  in  her  house, 
and  she  did  all  the  cooking,  washing,  and  ironing,  with  no 
help  except  that  of  a  thirteen-year-old  girl,  who  went  to 
school,  and  did  chores  night  and  morning.  The  cooking 
for  a  family  of  sixteen  was  done  on  the  hearth  in  front 
of  the  fireplace,  and  in  a  brick  oven  at  the  side.  Daniel 
Anthony  was  a  generous  man,  loved  his  wife,  and  was  well 
able  to  hire  help,  but  such  a  thing  was  not  thought  of  at 
that  time.  No  matter  how  heavy  the  work,  the  woman 
of  the  household  was  expected  to  do  it,  and  probably 
would  have  been  the  first  to  resent  the  idea  that  assistance 
was  needed." 

Domesticity  is  here  used  for  convenience  to 
designate  all  the  duties  which  a  married  woman 
of  the  past  century  was  expected  to  perform.  It 
consisted  first  of  the  physiological  functions  of 
wifehood  and  motherhood;  second,  of  the  handi- 
crafts of  a  civilized  household — cooking,  sewing, 
washing,  cleaning,  and  household  decoration;  and 
third,  the  social  duties  of  hospitality  and  the 
cultivation  of  good  manners.  In  the  earlier  part 
of  the  century  it  involved  also  the  manufacture  of 
nearly  all  the  raw  products  of  the  farm  into  the 
necessary  food,  clothing,  and  bedding  for  a  fam- 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     69 

ily  of  six  to  twelve  persons.  The  household  was 
then  not  merely  a  shelter  and  a  boarding-house, 
but  a  miniature  factory,  to  which  the  men-folk 
furnished  the  raw  products,  and  over  which  the 
wife  presided  as  the  working  boss. 

The  amount  of  labor,  skill,  and  knowledge 
necessary  to  the  successful  performance  of  such  a 
variety  of  duties  may  be  imagined  when  one  re- 
members that  from  this  family-factory  have  al- 
ready been  differentiated  the  separate  vocations 
of  nursing,  dressmaking,  tailoring,  knitting,  laun- 
dering, and  baking,  every  kind  of  cloth  manufac- 
ture, and  almost  all  the  primary  preparation  of 
foods.  If  a  woman  really  mastered  to  the 
point  of  competence  the  essentials  of  most  of 
these  handicrafts,  she  was  necessarily  strong,  in- 
telligent, and  skilful.  Under  such  circumstances 
the  vocation  of  domesticity  was  an  immense  and 
stimulating  field  of  action,  and  likely,  therefore, 
to  produce  a  high  quality  of  mind  and  char- 
acter. 

In  the  attempt  to  measure  the  effect  of  domestic 
occupations  upon  women's  capacity  and  character, 
it  is  difficult  to  find  any  perfect  analogy  with  men's 
industries.  Most  of  the  occupations  assigned  to 
men  had  long  ago  been  specialized  into  separate 
trades;  while  there  remained  to  women,  even 
after  a  considerable  portion  of  the  domestic 
processes  had  been  transferred  to  factories,  sev- 


70     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

eral  miscellaneous  vocations  which  had  no  in- 
herent connection  except  that  they  were  under- 
taken under  a  single  family  roof.  In  this  respect 
domesticity  was  heterogeneous  in  much  the  same 
sense  that  general  farming  was,  and  still  is. 
Agriculture,  as  practised  in  America  before  the 
War,  comprised  several  branches,  which  had  no 
necessary  relation  except  that  all  of  them  required 
the  use  of  land.  The  raising  of  grain  and  hay, 
of  livestock  of  the  several  kinds;  the  production 
of  butter,  milk,  and  cheese;  the  growing  and  mar- 
keting of  vegetables  and  fruit;  all  required  a  vast 
amount  and  variety  of  technique  and  knowledge, 
but  the  farmer's  education,  like  the  housewife's, 
consisted  in  acquiring  the  traditional  methods  of 
several,  if  not  of  all  these  specialties.  Although 
they  involved  such  difficult  scientific  subjects  as  the 
chemistry  of  soils,  the  effects  of  tillage  and 
moisture,  the  laws  of  heredity  and  breeding,  the 
chemistry  of  milk  and  its  products,  the  growth 
and  fertilization  of  plants;  there  was  no  available 
fund  of  information  and  no  opportunity  for  sys- 
tematic education  on  these  points.  Each  farmer 
started  with  his  father's  traditional  ideas  and 
methods;  if  he  learned  to  think  for  himself,  he 
varied  them,  made  some  experiments  on  his  own 
account,  and,  if  he  were  successful,  was  imitated 
by  a  few  of  his  neighbors,  thus  promoting  the 
progress  of  science.  If  he  failed  he  paid  a  pen- 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     71 

alty  in  a  loss  of  profits  and  reaped  the  scorn  of 
the  neighborhood. 

Housewifery,  though  as  heterogeneous  in  char- 
acter and  traditional  in  method  as  farming,  dif- 
fered from  it  in  several  other  ways.  Though  the 
farmer's  work  was  from  "  sun  to  sun,"  the 
woman's  work  was  never  done.  During  all  the 
years  of  child-bearing  the  mother  added  to  a 
twelve-  or  fourteen-hour  day  of  housework  the 
nightly  tending  of  children;  and,  in  case  of  illness 
in  the  family,  nursing  as  well.  Toward  the  latter 
part  of  the  century,  the  agitation  by  workingmen 
for  a  shorter  day  in  other  occupations  reacted  to 
shorten  the  farmer's  day;  and,  coincidently,  the 
removal  of  manufactures  from  the  home  lessened 
the  amount  of  labor  in  the  house.  It  did  not, 
however,  perceptibly  alter  the  intermittent  char- 
acter of  domestic  occupations  and,  as  a  rule,  it 
tended  to  make  them  less  and  less  educative. 

The  domestic  sphere  was  gradually  being  nar- 
rowed in  much  the  same  way  as  the  shoemaker's. 
He  had  once  been  a  highly  skilled  workman, 
whose  trade  demanded  a  knowledge  of  a  number 
of  skilful  processes,  from  the  tanning  of  leather 
to  the  designing  of  lasts.  If  he  followed  his 
trade  into  the  factory  he  was  reduced  to  perform- 
ing a  few  monotonous  operations  requiring  little 
intelligence;  if  he  remained  outside  he  became  a 
handy  repairer  of  half-worn  footwear.  Like  the 


72     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

housewife,  he  was  left  with  only  the  fragmentary 
processes  of  his  trade,  and  those  the  least  inter- 
esting, and  gradually  lost  the  stimulus  to 
originality  and  skill  which  had  been  in  itself  an 
education. 

Cooking,  which  was  the  most  varied  of  the 
crafts  left  in  the  home,  became  more  and  more 
elaborate  as  women  expended  more  time  and 
thought  upon  it.  Every  housewife  tried  to  vie 
with  her  neighbor  in  concocting  some  new  com- 
bination of  eggs,  milk,  sugar,  and  flour,  et  cetera; 
recipes  became  more  complicated  and  laborious— 
though  the  food  did  not  become  more  nutritious 
and  digestible — until  the  principal  literature  of 
the  self-educated  woman  consisted  of  cookbooks 
filled  with  hundreds  of  formulas.  Such  meager 
schooling  as  she  received  had  no  relation  either  to 
housewifery  or  motherhood.  It  was  inevitable 
that  when  she  had  mastered  the  technique  of 
ordinary  homekeeping,  whatever  originality  and 
ambition  she  might  possess  would  have  to  be 
exercised  within  the  limits  of  her  sphere,  and 
would,  therefore,  develop  in  the  direction  of 
elaboration  of  living.  As  we  shall  see  in  the 
chapters  on  dress,  personal  adornment  and 
clothes  became  almost  an  occupation  in  them- 
selves, engaging  more  and  more  time  and  atten- 
tion. Like  a  squirrel  in  a  cage,  she  must  exercise 
herself  by  running  around  in  the  wheel  contrived 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     73 

for  her,  instead  of  roaming  freely  at  large  to 
gather  nuts  against  the  winter's  need. 

Another  simple  difference  between  domesticity 
and  farming — the  difference  between  indoor  and 
outdoor  life — has  produced  effects  upon  women 
so  far-reaching  as  to  be  incalculable.  The 
farmer,  as  general  agriculture  began  to  be  sub- 
divided into  special  lines,  concentrated  his  energy 
and  technique  on  those  to  which  his  taste  and  his 
land  were  adapted.  He  was  not  shut  up  in  the 
barn  to  devote  himself  solely  to  milking  cows  and 
currying  horses  and  feeding  the  animals  three 
times  a  day.  Merely  from  a  hygienic  standpoint, 
housekeeping,  as  it  became  more  narrow  and 
more  elaborate,  became  less  healthful.  Thou- 
sands of  steps — patter,  patter  from  one  end  of 
the  house  to  the  other,  upstairs  and  down  cellar; 
hundreds  of  mechanical  operations — sweeping, 
dusting,  beating  of  eggs,  kneading  bread,  wash- 
ing, ironing,  and  scrubbing;  millions  of  stitches 
in  sewing,  mending,  knitting,  quilting — these  and 
similar  petty  labors,  varied  by  three  meals  a  day 
and  three  piles  of  dishes  to  wash,  and,  mayhap, 
the  care  of  a  baby  or  two,  made  up  the  vocation 
of  domesticity.  It  was  a  monotony  of  hetero- 
geneous drudgery,  comparable  only  to  farming, 
and  as  much  more  enervating  as  four  walls  and  a 
roof  are  than  the  blue  sky,  the  brown  furrow,  and 
the  live  and  growing  world  outside. 


74     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

A  few  years  ago  two  college  women  tested  the 
ordinary  household  operations  by  the  criteria  of 
hygienic  gymnastics.  Beginning  with  the  cus- 
tomary assumption  that  "  gravity  is  the  enemy  of 
woman,"  they  found  that  all  the  work  of  the 
housewife  except  scrubbing  kept  her  on  her  feet 
excessively,  that  most  of  the  arm  and  back  move- 
ments were  in  a  cramped  and  strained  position; 
and  that  she  walked  from  five  to  eight  miles  a  day 
in  dead,  if  not  altogether  bad,  air — in  short,  that 
housekeeping  was  hard  manual  labor.  Though 
every  housewife  knew  this  without  scientific 
demonstration,  it  has  not  been  sufficiently  recog- 
nized that  housework  of  the  old-fashioned  kind 
lacked  fresh  air,  variety,  and  exhilaration  pre- 
cisely as  factory  labor  does,  and  to  a  much  greater 
degree  than  farming. 

The  mental  element  of  joy  in  the  product,  which 
is  the  highest  compensation  one  can  have  for  any 
labor,  was  to  a  great  extent  lost  in  the  repetition 
involved  in  domestic  production.  No  doubt  the 
woman  who  made  the  first  chocolate  cake  or  the 
first  pumpkin  pie  got  lots  of  fun  out  of  it,  and  so 
long  as  she  kept  her  reputation  as  the  superior 
and  original  maker,  she  was  stimulated  to  further 
skill.  But  no  woman  could  keep  up  her  enthusi- 
asm for  preparing  potatoes  three  times  a  day, 
much  less  for  washing  the  tri-daily  dishes,  any 
more  than  the  ditchdigger  could  develop  his  mind 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     75 

and  continue  to  lift  with  zest  so  many  hundred 
shovelfuls  of  dirt  during  three  hundred  days  in 
a  year. 

Work  is,  undoubtedly,  the  chief  means  by  which 
human  capacity  is  increased  and  moral  percep- 
tions lifted  to  a  higher  level;  but  drudgery — that 
is,  the  indefinite  repetition  of  operations  requiring 
the  minimum  of  technique  and  intelligence — dead- 
ens the  mind  and,  if  pursued  in  the  midst  of  filth 
and  darkness,  brutalizes  the  worker.  In  our  day 
it  is  being  recognized  that  in  proportion  as 
drudgery  is  done  under  healthful  conditions  and 
for  the  attainment  of  an  interesting  and  worthy 
goal,  it  may  become  a  means  of  self-development. 
Professor  Lillien  J.  Martin  made  more  than  sev- 
enty-five thousand  observations,  extending  over  a 
period  of  three  years,  on  one  subject,  in  order  to 
determine  a  certain  fact  in  experimental  psychol- 
ogy; in  point  of  repetition  it  was  as  wearisome  as 
if  she  had  washed  dishes  three  times  a  day  for  a 
lifetime;  but  in  point  of  mental  interest  it  had  the 
zest  of  working  in  a  new  field,  and  for  its  goal  the 
greatest  intellectual  joy  in  life,  the  making  of  a 
scientific  discovery. 

One  further  parallel  may  be  drawn  between 
domesticity  as  a  vocation  and  the  occupations  of 
men.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury the  American  family  was  still  an  industrial 
unit.  All  of  its  members  were  producers  accord- 


76     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

ing  to  their  age,  sex,  and  ability,  and  all  pooled 
their  products  and  shared  the  results.  Very  little 
ready  money  was  in  circulation,  and  the  male  head 
of  the  family  had  relatively  small  chance  to  rob 
his  dependents  while  living,  although  he  might 
distribute  his  estate  very  unjustly  after  he  was 
dead.  When  the  family  gradually  ceased  to  be 
an  industrial  unit,  the  minor  children  began  to 
control  their  own  earnings  as  soon  as  they  left 
home,  and  the  husband  sold  the  products  of  the 
farm  or  the  business  for  money.  But  the  women 
of  the  household,  no  longer  economically  im- 
portant as  manufacturers  of  raw  material,  were 
not  in  a  position  to  sell  their  services  in  the  public 
market.  They  were  still  producers,  but  only  sec- 
ondary producers,  so  to  speak,  by  so  much  as  a 
cooked  egg  is  better  than  a  raw  one,  and  a  clean 
sheet  than  a  dirty  one;  and  they  were  in  conse- 
quence reduced  to  a  position  of  quasi-peonage. 
Just  as  the  serf  of  medieval  times  was  at  the 
mercy  of  his  master-employer  because  he  could 
not  leave  the  land  for  another  and  better-paid  job, 
so  mothers  and  daughters  became  dependent  upon 
the  goodwill  of  the  master  of  their  household. 

Nor  did  the  fact  that,  unlike  the  peon,  many  a 
woman  might  receive  more  than  the  value  of  her 
service,  alter  her  economic  dependence.  Greedy, 
idle,  seductive  females  practised  the  arts  of  their 
kind  to  wring  from  industrious  men  a  luxurious 


77 

living  to  which  they  were  not  entitled;  while  the 
majority  of  hard-working,  devoted  wives  were 
left  without  recourse  against  their  particular  sup- 
porter's notion  of  what  they  had  earned. 

How  this  situation  worked  out  occasionally  is 
illustrated  by  the  following  story,  told  by  a  lawyer 
about  an  old  farmer's  wife  down  on  Cape  Cod. 
The  farmer  died  without  a  will,  and  his  greedy 
heirs,  grudging  her  the  life-use  of  one-third  of 
the  estate,  which  the  law  gave  her,  managed  to 
prove  that  the  farmer  had  imposed  upon  her  by 
an  illegal  ceremony  of  marriage,  and  that  she, 
therefore,  was  not  entitled  to  any  of  the  estate. 
The  Judge,  thereupon,  advised  the  old  woman  to 
bring  in  a  bill  for  her  services,  for  if  she  had  not 
been  his  wife,  the  farmer  was  not  entitled  to  have 
her  do  his  housework  for  nothing.  Accordingly, 
she  brought  in  a  bill  at  the  current  rate  of  wage 
for  a  domestic  servant,  which  the  Court  allowed, 
and  it  took  the  whole  of  the  estate  to  pay  it.  Of 
course,  she  had  been  "  supported  "  all  that  time, 
but  with  the  discovery  that  she  was  not  the  man's 
wife,  it  was  also  discovered  that  her  support 
alone  was  not  a  full  equivalent  for  her  labor. 

The  same  principle  was  put  in  a  slightly  differ- 
ent way  by  Higginson,  when  he  wrote: 

"  A  farmer  works  himself  to  death  in  the  hay  field, 
and  his  wife  works  herself  wholly  to  death  in  the  dairy. 


78     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

The  neighbors  come  in  to  sympathize  after  her  demise; 
and  during  the  few  months'  interval  before  his  second 
marriage,  they  say  approvingly:  '  He  always  was  a  gen- 
erous man  to  his  folks!  He  was  a  good  provider!  '  But 
where  was  the  room  for  generosity  any  more  than  the 
member  of  any  other  firm  is  to  be  called  generous,  when 
he  keeps  the  books,  receipts  the  bills,  and  divides  the 
money?" 

The  economic  disintegration  of  the  Puritan- 
Colonial  family  in  the  last  century  resulted  in 
taking  away  from  the  housewife  one  of  the  chief 
incentives  of  any  labor,  i.e.,  definite  money  com- 
pensation. Marriage,  though  nominally  a  part- 
nership, left  the  second  partner  in  the  position  of 
putting  in  her  property  and  her  labor,  and  then 
being  obliged  to  trust  the  first  partner  to  give 
her  as  much  or  as  little  of  the  increase  as  he  chose. 
Stripped  of  its  sentimental  aspects,  such  a  bargain 
was  a  much  greater  risk  for  the  woman  than  for 
the  man,  and  equally  unjust,  whether  the  wife  got 
more  or  less. 

The  reaction  of  an  occupation  pursued  through 
a  lifetime  is  so  tremendous  upon  the  physique 
and  the  mental  and  moral  development  of  men, 
that  its  effects  are  easily  recognized  everywhere. 
But  in  a  country  where  a  man  is  comparatively 
free  to  choose  or  to  drift  into  the  occupation  to 
which  he  is  suited,  the  affinity  between  a  man  and 
his  calling  would  naturally  reinforce  his  stronger 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     79 

characteristics,  and  become  an  element  of  general 
social  progress.  Men  do  better  that  which  they 
are  fitted  for,  and  they  are  apt  to  like  what  they 
can  do  well.  Now,  the  peculiar  misfortune  of 
women  has  been  that,  while  the  original  field  of 
domestic  production  was  rapidly  narrowed,  so- 
cial convention,  during  at  least  two  generations, 
prevented  them  from  engaging  in  any  substitute 
for  it  outside  the  home.  Although  their  primi- 
tive sphere  was  constantly  shrinking  they  were 
not  yet  freed  to  find  another.  The  theory  of 
mankind  and  of  the  Church  was  still:  all  women 
must  be  domestic,  whether  married  or  single; 
whether  by  temperament  maternal  or  celibate; 
whether  adapted  to  domestic  detail  or  not.  The 
vocation  manacled  the  woman,  the  woman  could 
not  choose  what  she  liked,  or  what  she  was  fitted 
to  do. 

The  effect  of  this  social  coercion  was  to 
suppress  initiative  and  originality  to  a  degree 
beyond  imagination.  For  it  was  inevitably  the 
women  of  most  active  minds  and  of  largest  ad- 
ministrative capacity  who  found  the  limitations 
of  housekeeping  most  irksome.  Suppose  every 
man  in  the  world  had  to  be  a  farmer,  and  could 
never  break  away  into  law  or  science  or  art  or 
engineering  or  even  literature,  without  paying  a 
penalty  in  social  ostracism,  and — worst  of  all — 
in  the  sacrifice  of  a  family  and  a  home;  suppose 


8o     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

that  he  never  received  any  wages  directly,  but  was 
just  "  supported,"  and  now  and  then  accepted 
what  his  senior  partner  chose  to  give.  Indeed, 
we  need  not  suppose,  for  this  was  the  state  of  a 
large  class  of  men  in  the  Middle  Ages.  But  the 
historian  calls  them  the  "  dark  ages,"  and  ex- 
plains carefully  that  under  such  limitations  the 
development  of  great  men  and  great  ideas  was 
not  to  be  expected.  No  more  was  it  probable 
that  domesticated  women,  inheriting  an  environ- 
ment and  a  tradition  of  smallness,  would  show, 
even  when  the  doors  of  opportunity  were  opened 
a  little  way,  a  high  degree  of  talent  in  untried 
fields.  It  is  only  by  some  such  analogy  as  this 
that  we  can  realize  the  effect  of  housewifery  in 
stunting  women  of  exceptional  ability  who,  con- 
scientiously pinching  themselves  to  fit  their  sphere, 
were  unhappy  or  ill-tempered;  or,  if  they  had  the 
courage  to  break  through  that  domestic  in- 
closure,  found  themselves  pariahs,  doomed  to 
isolation,  if  not  to  failure,  in  the  unfriendly  metier 
for  which  they  had  no  preparation. 

When,  toward  the  end  of  the  last  century, 
women  first  began  to  organize  themselves  into 
clubs  for  self-culture  and  social  activity,  they  were 
ridiculed  for  their  lack  of  ability  to  do  team- 
work. Their  critics  seemed  to  have  forgotten 
that  there  had  never  been  incentive  or  oppor- 
tunity for  cooperation  toward  larger  ends,  except 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     81 

in  the  sewing-bee  and  the  Ladies'  Aid  Society. 
Miss  Tarbell  has  clearly  shown  that  the  Civil 
War  was  the  first  occasion  in  which  any  large 
number  of  women  came  together  outside  the  home 
to  work  for  the  public  good.  That  excessive  de- 
votion to  the  need  of  her  own  family  which  was 
the  glory  of  her  womanhood  prevented  her  from 
taking  an  interest  in  larger  affairs.  Just  as  the 
lawyer  instinctively  measured  everything  by  the 
law,  so  the  specialized  domestic  woman  limited 
her  thinking  within  the  periphery  of  those  matters 
which  it  was  necessary  for  a  woman  to  know.  She 
took  the  personal  view,  because  she  had  to — her 
happiness  and  comfort  depended  not  on  town 
government  and  trade,  not  on  political  theories 
and  international  quarrels,  but  on  the  will  of  the 
person  nearest  to  her.  In  other  words,  her  vo- 
cation was  to  wait  upon  and  please  a  small 
circle  of  people,  and  therefore  her  intuitions 
in  respect  to  personality  were  extraordinarily 
developed. 

Many  of  the  minor  characteristics  set  down  as 
peculiarly  feminine  are,  in  fact,  the  product  of  the 
universal  domestic  employment  of  women  in  past 
times;  as,  for  instance,  the  proficiency  in  the  ob- 
servation and  memory  of  details.  Women  re- 
•member  certain  personal  details  of  indoor  life 
for  the  same  reason  that  the  ornithologist  sees 
and  remembers  the  markings  of  every  bird.  This 


82     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

same  man,  however,  would  probably  not  remem- 
ber the  pattern  of  the  wallpaper  in  his  bed-cham- 
ber, nor  be  capable  of  choosing  a  tasteful  neck- 
tie; while  his  equally  capable  wife  could  not  tell 
a  robin  from  a  peewee,  and  yet  could  describe  ac- 
curately the  dress  of  all  her  guests  at  a  tea 
party. 

Women  are  precisely  like  men  in  that  they  fol- 
low the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  of  greatest 
apparent  self-interest.  Since  successful  domes- 
ticity required  the  mastery  of  an  immense  num- 
ber of  petty  details  inside  the  house,  and  the  at- 
tainment of  order,  cleanliness,  and  comfort 
therein,  the  mind  of  the  homekeeping  woman 
dwelt  incessantly  not  alone  upon  these  affairs, 
but  also  upon  the  persons  whom  they  concerned. 
Formerly  women  could  recall  the  marriage  rela- 
tionship of  the  whole  family  connection,  and  the 
number  of  the  children;  while  many  a  man  could 
not  tell  how  old  his  wife  was,  nor  whether  the 
first  baby  was  born  in  the  old  house  or  the  new 
one.  It  is,  indeed,  no  more  masculine  for  men 
to  be  oblivious  of  domestic  details  than  it  is  fem- 
inine to  be  master  of  them — it  is  merely  human  to 
be  what  one  has  to  be  in  the  station  to  which  one 
was  born  and  reared. 

It  is  a  natural  corollary  to  this  principle  that  the 
purely  domestic  woman  of  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  should  have  been  quite  as  "  eager 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     83 

in  the  pursuit  of  trifles  "  as  the  lady  of  leisure 
whom  Mercy  Warren  complained  of  a  hundred 
years  earlier.  Given  a  vocation  which  demanded 
incessant  attention  to  a  thousand  small  matters, 
even  when  the  number  of  those  affairs  was  di- 
minished so  as  to  greatly  release  the  housewife, 
the  average  woman  would  still  inevitably  pursue 
trifles  until  there  was  both  a  chance  and  an  in- 
centive to  follow  larger  things.  Only  a  very  ex- 
ceptional girl  would  make  a  new  path  for  herself 
because  the  cost  of  any  departure  from  the  sanc- 
tified conventions  of  women's  lives  was  so  tre- 
mendous. It  cost  a  man  something  to  refuse  to 
treat  other  men  to  liquor  in  a  country  where  that 
was  the  universal  custom,  but  it  did  not  make  him 
a  by-word  or  prevent  him  from  marrying  and 
having  a  home.  And  it  is  not  exaggeration  to 
say  that  nothing  less  than  this  was  the  penalty  for 
any  woman  who  broke  through  the  appointed 
sphere  and  offered  opinions  on  those  larger  ques- 
tions relegated  to  men. 

There  were  thus  both  negative  and  positive  rea- 
sons for  woman  to  become  small-minded.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  sole  occupation  of  her  life  con- 
sisted of  exacting,  repetitious,  and  ephemeral 
things;  on  the  other,  until  there  was  an  impera- 
tive call  to  other  vocations  outside,  she  could  not 
develop  the  larger  mind  and  become  convinced  of 
the  futility  of  the  conventional  methods  of  house- 


84     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

keeping.  The  more  conscientious  the  housewife 
was,  the  more  petty  she  surely  became,  devoting 
herself  to  the  elaboration  of  food,  clothes,  dec- 
oration, and  needlework  in  the  effort  to  be  the 
perfectly  correct  feminine  creature. 

Curiously  enough,  it  was  not  purely  domestic 
women  who  revolutionized  domestic  science  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  century  and  relieved  it  of  its 
terrible  drudgery  and  picayune  monotony,  but 
rather  thinking,  educated  women  who,  having 
escaped  into  a  larger  world  of  scientific,  sanitary, 
and  economic  progress,  looked  back  and,  out  of 
pity,  began  to  rescue  their  sisters  from  the  bog 
of  household  tradition.  One  woman,  Ellen  H. 
Richards,  devoting  herself  to  chemistry  and 
hygiene,  did  more  to  make  the  home  a  livable 
place  than  a  thousand  other  conscientious,  de- 
voted homekeepers,  who  remained  imprisoned  in 
the  woman's  sphere  of  her  generation,  and  that 
without  the  sacrifice  of  any  truly  feminine  qual- 
ity. The  "  model  domestic  woman  "  is  now  gen- 
erally the  one  whose  methods  are  belated;  who 
cannot  keep  her  servants,  and  does  not  yet  dream 
that  this  is  the  day  of  employes;  who  does  her 
tasks  in  the  old-fashioned  way;  who  still  thinks  it 
shiftless  to  leave  any  of  the  laundry  unironed; 
who  balks  at  a  patent  dishwasher  and  a  fireless 
cooker;  and  who  has  not  yet  found  out  that  there 
is  a  whole  library  of  household  science  with  which 


DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION     85 

she  might  educate  herself  and  mitigate  the  end- 
less pettiness  of  living. 

It  was  inevitable,  as  soon  as  women  in  any  num- 
bers undertook  work  outside  the  home  for  wages, 
that  they  should  begin  to  compare  domesticity  dis- 
advantageously  with  other  vocations.  The  first 
effect  of  this  was  that  the  American  girl  would 
no  longer  work  out  as  a  servant,  and,  when  she 
married,  would  have  as  her  social  ambition  the 
employment  of  some  immigrant  to  do  the  more 
laborious  and  tedious  things.  The  next  and 
logical  result  was  that  a  good  many  young  women 
declined  to  keep  house  even  for  their  husbands, 
and  went  to  boarding;  and  that  indulgent  hus- 
bands, who  preferred  good-temper  and  dainty, 
agreeable  companionship  in  a  wife,  encouraged 
wives  to  rid  themselves  of  every  form  of  drudg- 
ery. Whenever  the  wife  had  earned  money  be- 
fore marriage  she  could  not  help  measuring  her 
wifehood  in  financial  terms — whether  she  did  any 
household  labor  or  not — for  she  had  been  brought 
up  on  the  theory  that  because  of  her  potential 
motherhood  she  was  "  entitled  to  support."  At 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century  not  a  few 
such  women  have  become  intelligent  enough  to 
question  the  tradition  of  economic  dependence, 
and  cannot  keep  their  self-respect  unless  they  give 
a  full  return  for  what  they  receive. 

The  "  strictly  domestic  "  woman  is  a  rapidly 


86     DOMESTICITY  AS  A  VOCATION 

vanishing  type,  eliminated  by  world-changes  in 
social  and  industrial  conditions,  but  it  will  be  sev- 
eral generations  probably  before  the  effects  of 
domesticity  upon  the  character  and  mentality  of 
women  will  disappear.  Women  of  the  more  be- 
lated kind  will  continue  to  be  petty,  devoted  to 
unnecessary  details  of  dress  and  household  affairs, 
timid,  and  unoriginal — the  sport  of  hereditary 
and  conventional  forces  which  they  do  not  com- 
prehend. Of  necessity,  being  out  of  touch  both 
with  the  old  and  the  new  order,  they  will  be  dis- 
contented and  will  make  the  homes  of  which  they 
are  the  mistresses  as  unsatisfactory  as  themselves. 
But  in  proportion  as  domesticity  is  remodeled 
and  made  tolerable  by  scientific  administration, 
women,  even  domestic  women,  will  cease  to  be 
petty,  gossipy,  unthinking  servants  of  the  house- 
hold. There  will  be  as  great  a  revolution  in  the 
characteristics  of  the  homemaking  woman  as 
there  has  been  in  the  qualities  of  the  farmer  since 
the  spread  of  agricultural  science.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that,  as  the  traditional  household  labors 
are  modified  or  vanish  altogether  from  the  home, 
wifehood  and  motherhood  are  seen  to  have  no  es- 
sential connection  with  sewing,  cooking,  or  laun- 
dry-work under  the  conditions  of  modern  life,  and 
stand  out  as  true  vocational  functions  in  them- 
selves. 


SECTION  II 
THE  EFFECT  UPON  WOMEN 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

"  I  would  rather  have  a  thorn  in  my  side  than  an  echo." — 
RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 

"  Mirth  and  opium,  ratafia  and  tears, 
The  daily  anodyne  and  nightly  draught 
To  kill  those  foes  to  fair  ones,  time  and  thought." 

ALEXANDER  POPE. 

MANNERS  and  mannerisms,  which  are  the  con- 
scious adjustment  of  their  behavior  that  human 
beings  make  to  the  conventions  of  society,  have  a 
greater  significance  than  is  generally  attributed 
to  them.  The  habitual  bearing  reflects  the  social 
stratum  from  which  the  person  came,  modified  by 
the  need  of  making  himself  acceptable  to  the  par- 
ticular circle  in  which  he  ultimately  found  him- 
self. Since  manner  was  always  a  post-natal  ac- 
quisition, any  unforeseen  situation  or  emotion  was 
likely  to  bring  to  the  surface  the  unmannerly, 
primitive  human  being.  A  grown  man  and  an 
adult  woman  have  a  code  of  behavior  quite  dif- 
ferent from  each  other,  which  is  usually  ascribed 
to  the  fundamental  sex  distinction  and  which,  for 
want  of  a  better  term,  we  may  assign  to  the 
"  temperament  "  of  each. 

89 


90     THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

In  a  small  town  in  New  Mexico  I  saw  playing 
opposite  my  window  for  several  weeks  a  child 
perhaps  six  years  of  age.  It  was  neatly  dressed 
in  boy's  trousers,  but  had  two  long  braids  of 
black  hair  tied  with  bows  of  pink  ribbon  hanging 
down  its  back.  From  the  way  in  which  it  ran 
and  played,  from  its  tone  of  voice  and  manner, 
it  was  impossible  to  know  whether  it  was  a  boy 
or  girl,  and,  curiously  enough,  neither  the  children 
with  whom  it  played,  nor  the  neighbors,  seemed 
to  know — nor,  I  might  almost  add,  to  care — nor 
did  I  ever  learn  its  sex.  Yet  in  a  very  few  years 
it  will  undoubtedly  learn  a  behavior  befitting  the 
conventions  of  its  sex;  that  is,  it  will  acquire  the 
mannerisms  of  masculinity  or  femininity. 

It  is  well  known  that  a  girl  brought  up  among 
boys  becomes  "  hoydenish,"  that  is  to  say,  boyish 
in  manner;  while  a  boy  brought  up  in  a  family  of 
women  is  apt  to  be  "  a  sissy,"  or,  so  to  speak, 
girlish  in  his  ways.  It  is  probable  that  if  they 
were  brought  up  together  from  babyhood  with- 
out having  suggested  to  them  that  any  difference 
of  behavior  was  necessary,  their  manners  would 
vary  with  their  innate  temperament  more  than 
with  their  sex.  In  a  society  where,  from  in- 
fancy, great  stress  was  laid  upon  sex  differences, 
the  tendency  to  be  bold  or  shrinking,  polite  or 
rude,  loud-mouthed  or  soft-spoken,  lively  or 
quiet,  emotional  or  judicial,  impulsive  or  re- 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT    91 

strained,  vulgar  or  refined,  became  predominant 
or  was  rigidly  repressed  along  the  lines  of  social 
approval  or  disapproval.  Among  the  few  prim- 
itive peoples  where  men  and  women  were  ap- 
proximately equal  in  status,  there  was  no  essential 
difference  in  courage,  emotionality,  and  delicacy; 
but  among  the  majority  of  races  where  the  one 
sex  has  controlled  the  destiny  of  the  other,  the 
standards  both  of  morals  and  manners  were  laid 
down  by  men  chiefly  for  their  own  convenience 
and  pleasure,  and  continually  tended  to  become 
exaggerated  in  the  efforts  of  women  to  win  and 
to  satisfy  their  masters.  It  came  about  that 
women,  particularly  of  the  well-to-do  classes, 
were  expected  to  be  excessively  timid,  gentle,  un- 
reasoning, fastidious,  vivacious — in  two  words, 
charming  and  docile.  Or,  in  another  phrase,  the 
successful  woman  must  be  what  men  approved. 

Now,  naturally,  a  member  of  the  ruling  class 
would  not  like  an  aggressive  subordinate,  because 
she  might  sometimes  cross  his  will;  nor  a  too- 
reasoning  creature,  because  she  might  think  other- 
wise or  put  him  in  the  wrong;  nor  a  slovenly 
partner,  for  she  would  not  make  a  home  pleas- 
ant; nor  a  grumpy  one,  because  she  would  not  be 
an  agreeable  companion.  In  short,  civilized  man 
molded  woman  into  the  chaste  image  of  what  he 
himself  would  rather  not  be,  and  required  her  to 
practise  the  difficult  habits  which  insured  his 


92     THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

comfort,  pleased  his  taste,  and  would  not  disturb 
his  peace.  As  a  result  of  a  long  period  of  in- 
culcation, in  women  of  successive  generations, 
they  have  acquired  an  extreme  code  of  conduct 
and  manners.  Having  no  opportunity  and  little 
encouragement  to  be  natural,  they  suppressed  all 
the  masculine,  that  is  to  say,  the  stronger,  tend- 
encies of  their  natures,  and  became,  as  idleness 
and  ease  permitted,  more  and  more  effeminate. 
The  cultivation  of  abnormal  delicacy  of  feeling, 
of  excessive  dependence  upon  men,  and  of  hyper- 
weakness,  or,  to  use  the  current  mocking  phrase 
of  the  past  time,  "  the  clinging  vine,"  became  the 
pose  of  the  woman  who  aspired  to  be  a  perfect 
lady. 

Since  one  of  the  first  results  of  a  democratic 
regime  was  to  make  every  citizen  try  to  rise  into 
a  higher  social  stratum,  American  women  of 
every  grade  were  stimulated  to  be  as  ladylike  as 
possible  in  imitation  of  the  affected  manners  of 
the  women  of  greater  leisure  and  resources  above 
them.  They  seized  upon  the  conventional 
standard  of  ladyhood,  and  affected  it  to  a 
ludicrous  degree.  In  this  way  there  came  to  be 
two  conflicting  ideals  of  behavior:  the  one 
originally  developed  in  the  marriageable  type  by 
man  for  purposes  of  domesticity;  the  other 
adopted  by  women  themselves  for  the  purpose  of 
social  elevation. 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT     93 

Of  all  the  habits  which  woman  tried  to  ac- 
quire, vivacity  was,  perhaps,  the  most  conspicu- 
ous— the  more  so  as  it  was  not  characteristic 
either  of  the  primitive  or  the  intellectual  type. 
As  civilized  woman  enlarged  her  social  functions, 
she  added  to  the  tricks  of  allurement  other  man- 
ners with  which  to  fill  up  her  increasing  leisure, 
and  to  express  vicariously  the  rising  status  of  the 
family.  In  earlier  times  men  offered  hospitality 
and  their  dependents,  of  whom  the  wife  was  chief, 
performed  the  labor  which  it  entailed;  but  in 
Nineteenth-Century  America  one  of  the  principal 
glories  of  the  housewife  was  to  keep  an  open 
house.  The  English  custom  of  after-dinner 
coffee,  wine,  and  conversation,  and  the  Conti- 
nental habit  of  frequenting  a  cafe  or  a  garden  for 
social  diversion,  had  been  replaced  by  the  amuse- 
ments of  the  Puritanized  domestic  circle — and, 
for  a  certain  class  of  men,  by  the  saloon. 

In  this  new  field  of  mixed  society,  women  took 
a  much  larger  share  of  leadership  than  they  had 
been  allowed  in  the  Old  World,  and  talkativeness 
became  a  necessary  accomplishment  for  any  young 
woman  who  wished  to  marry  well.  As  the  "  pro- 
fessional entertainer  "  of  private  life,  she  must 
decorate  her  person  and  cultivate  a  lively,  witty, 
agreeable  manner.  Whether  she  had  anything  to 
say  or  not,  she  must  appear  to  have — she  must 
learn  to  keep  the  ball  rolling.  Unfortunately, 


94     THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

her  life  being  largely  indoors,  there  was  very  little 
common  ground  of  conversation  between  a 
woman  and  a  man.  Starting  with  the  instinctive 
coquetry  of  the  mating  female,  there  was  evolved 
for  social  purposes  a  series  of  devices  for  ex- 
ercising her  charm  and  giving  young  men  a  good 
time.  The  subjects  of  conversation  were  neces- 
sarily limited  to  personal  relations  and  social  gos- 
sip, in  both  of  which  there  was  lacking  the  element 
of  unexpectedness.  It,  therefore,  became  a  part 
of  the  talk-game  for  girls  to  express  themselves 
in  veiled  meanings,  or  by  teasing,  or  by  pseudo- 
quarrels,  to  produce  the  sensation  of  novelty. 
Such  a  mental  paper-chase  afforded  amusement 
to  the  young  of  both  sexes  without  committing 
them  to  serious  courtship.  Indeed,  girls  prac- 
tised it  on  their  fathers  and  other  elderly  men, 
who  were  entertained  thereby  as  by  the  antics  of 
a  puppy  in  training. 

In  order  to  enhance  the  bird-like  sprightliness 
which,  at  this  period,  was  the  ideal  behavior  of  a 
charming  girl,  somebody  invented  "  silvery 
laughter."  Children  laughed  naturally,  if  not 
always  sweetly,  as  a  sign  of  physical  exuberance 
rather  than  of  wit.  Adults  outgrew  it  as  they  did 
the  animal  instinct  to  maul  each  other.  If  be- 
longing to  a  crude  society,  they  might  sometimes 
guffaw  or  titter,  according  to  convention,  while 
in  more  cultivated  strata  humor  met  merely  with 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT     95 

the  appreciation  of  a  low  chuckle  or  smile.  The 
girlish  habit  of  constant  laughter  over  trifles  that 
were  not  at  all  funny  in  themselves,  was  partly,  no 
doubt,  an  expression  of  health,  but  it  was  con- 
tinued into  womanhood  as  a  means  of  entertain- 
ing and  of  appearing  gay  and  young.  Among 
men,  on  the  contrary,  a  youthful  appearance  was 
a  disadvantage,  and  the  boy,  therefore,  assumed 
gravity  at  the  earliest  possible  age. 

The  superficial  animation,  which  was  merely  a 
curious  habit  connected  with  feminine  parade,  dis- 
appeared with  the  worn-out  trousseau.  The  wife 
found  out  very  soon  after  marriage  that  her  girl- 
ish tricks  did  not  any  longer  entertain  her  hus- 
band, and  practised  them,  if  at  all,  on  other 
women.  Though  no  longer  keyed  up  to  the 
maiden  tension,  she  was  apt  to  keep  the  habit  of 
petty,  driveling,  scrappy  talk  about  clothes, 
recipes,  babies,  and  neighborhood  trivialities. 
She  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  no  incentive  to  dis- 
cuss or  to  inform  herself  upon  the  larger  affairs 
of  the  world,  having  in  nobody's  eyes  any  concern 
with  them.  If  she  did  offer  opinions  or  ask  ques- 
tions, her  men-folk  rarely  treated  them  seriously. 

The  insistent  and  pervasive  character  of  do- 
mestic duty  required  that  women  should  never 
forget  their  household  matters,  and,  if  they  talked 
at  all,  it  was  inevitably  of  the  things  nearest  them. 
It  is  proverbial  that  young  mothers  can  seldom 


96     THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

be  diverted  from  baby-talk — or  talk  about  the 
baby — it  becomes  a  sort  of  obsession.  This  is, 
indeed,  not  so  much  out  of  motherly  conceit  as 
because  the  baby  itself  is  so  absolutely  incessant 
that  it  leaves  no  time  for  thinking  of  impersonal 
matters.  The  mother,  for  the  first  year  of  a 
child's  life,  is  much  like  a  patient  in  a  sanatorium, 
except  that  her  mind  is  fixed  on  the  infant's  symp- 
toms rather  than  upon  her  own. 

Again,  "  the  typical  woman  "  used  to  gabble  of 
ephemeral  things  for  the  same  reason  that  com- 
mercial men  will  sit  smoking  and  swapping  stories 
in  a  hotel  lobby — it  is  both  amusing  and  relaxing. 
But  while  women,  like  men,  talk  not  only  to 
amuse  others,  but  to  relieve  the  nervous  tension 
of  the  day,  there  was,  after  all,  one  striking  dif- 
ference between  the  domestic  woman  and  the 
average  man  in  the  purpose  of  their  conversation. 
Having  a  stake  in  matters  outside  the  sphere  of 
home,  and  of  general  interest,  men  formed  the 
habit  of  conversing  to  get  and  to  give  informa- 
tion. Men  of  superior  ability  alternated  in  talk- 
ing and  listening,  while  the  ordinary  woman  was 
like  a  cowboy  or  a  miner,  or  a  countryman  whose 
experience  is  so  limited  that  he  does  not  willingly 
listen  to  accounts  of  foreign  travel  or  adventure, 
much  less  to  descriptions  of  pictures  or  historic 
monuments. 

The  cumulative  effect  of  domesticity  has  been 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT     97 

to  produce  scrappy-mindedness  in  woman.  The 
average  housewife's  attention  hops  from  one 
thing  to  another,  never  having  been  concentrated 
upon  a  continuous,  homogeneous  occupation,  but 
rather  upon  a  succession  of  miscellaneous  details, 
all  of  which  are  about  equally  unimportant,  but 
none  of  which  must  be  forgotten.  Many  women, 
even  well-bred  ones,  constantly  interrupt  the  con- 
versation with  irrelevant  exclamations.  Like 
children  they  have  slight  power  of  inhibition;  they 
can't  wait  to  be  heard,  and  so  two  talk  at  the  same 
time;  they  spill  over,  so  to  speak,  and  say  what- 
ever comes  uppermost  without  discretion  or  dis- 
crimination. Half-grown  boys,  as  well  as  girls, 
have  these  same  conversational  tendencies,  but 
they  usually  lose  them  early  because  men  will  not 
tolerate  a  talkative,  foolish  kid,  while,  in  the  case 
of  girls,  the  average  man  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury liked  them  to  be  childish  chatterers.  It  is  a 
curious  fact  that  civilized  men  have  always  put 
a  premium  on  foolishness  in  girls — especially  in 
pretty  girls — while  they  spoke  scornfully  of  it  in 
older  women. 

In  no  respect  have  women  been  supposed  to 
differ  more  markedly  from  men  than  in  the  ex- 
pression of  emotion.  The  feminine  type  of  the 
past  century  laughed  often  and  too  easily;  wept 
almost  as  readily  with  any  shock  of  fear  or  grief, 
and  not  infrequently  as  a  sign  of  extreme  anger. 


98     THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

It  is  a  significant  fact,  which  is  generally  over- 
looked, that  the  women  of  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury, and  particularly  those  who  have  made  them- 
selves economically  independent,  no  longer  be- 
have in  this  way.  Tearfulness,  along  with  talka- 
tiveness, has  gone  out  of  fashion.  The  heroines 
who  fainted  in  the  Eighteenth-Century  novel,  and 
cried  buckets  of  tears  in  the  fiction  of  the  past 
generation,  now  control  their  emotions  almost  as 
well  as  men — perhaps  even  better,  if  one  may 
judge  from  the  copious  swear-words  which  char- 
acterize the  lively  feelings  of  the  typical  Western 
hero.  In  infants,  crying  has  always  been  re- 
garded as  an  evidence  that  they  wanted  attention 
—that  they  were  uncomfortable,  or  wished  to  be 
dandled;  and  at  this  age  there  is  certainly  no  dif- 
ference between  the  sexes.  Nor  throughout 
childhood — where  they  have  had  the  same 
discipline  and  an  equal  reason  for  self-control- 
did  children  show  any  perceptible  variation  along 
the  line  of  sex.  But  by  the  time  the  boy  and  the 
girl  had  reached  the  period  of  adolescence,  girls 
had  usually  formed  the  habit  of  crying  when  they 
were  unhappy  and  displeased;  and  boys,  of  fight- 
ing, swearing,  and  smashing  things. 

In  modern  systems  of  education,  the  power  of 
suggestion  is  recognized  to  be  as  strong  as  that 
of  authority  in  molding  children.  But  even  in 
the  by-gone  period  of  stricter  discipline,  sug- 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT     99 

gestion  was  no  less  a  factor  in  the  formation  of 
character,  though  not  consciously  practised.  The 
habits  of  common  decency — brushing  the  teeth, 
cleaning  the  nails,  and  bathing — as  every  mother 
knew — had  to  be  assured  not  so  much  by  coercion 
as  by  appeals  to  pride  and  affection.  It  was  sug- 
gested to  the  boy  or  girl  that  they  could  never  be 
grown  up  till  they  had  learned  to  button  their 
clothes. 

In  such  matters  boys  and  girls  received  pre- 
cisely the  same  suggestions,  but  in  every  habit 
where  the  conventional  standards  for  men  and 
women  differed,  the  force  of  suggestion  re- 
inforced girlishness  in  girls  and  boyishness  in 
boys.  When  a  boy  cried  with  hurt  or  fury,  he 
was  told  he  could  "  never  be  a  man  "  if  he  cried. 
Girls,  on  the  other  hand,  were  expected  to  cry, 
out  of  their  feminine  temperament,  and  if,  now 
and  then,  one  did  not  do  so,  but  raged  and 
smashed  things,  she  was  regarded  as  a  tomboy 
and  a  scandal  to  her  sex.  When  little  girls  wept, 
they  were  likely  to  be  petted  and  comforted;  if 
they  kicked  and  yelled,  they  were  punished  and 
made  to  understand  that  to  behave  like  a  boy 
was  the  most  outrageous  thing  they  could  do — a 
sin  comparable  to  lying  and  stealing.  Now  if, 
as  is  well  known,  a  baby  a  week  old  learns  that 
somebody  will  give  it  attention  if  it  yells  long 
enough,  and  takes  advantage  thereby,  it  is 


ioo   THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

scarcely  possible  to  exaggerate  the  effect  of  the 
constant  emphasis  on  hysteria  as  the  proper  form 
of  emotional  explosion  for  women. 

Emotional  expression  is,  in  fact,  determined 
far  more  by  race  and  temperament  than  by  sex. 
The  South  European  peoples  are  in  this  respect 
more  highly  developed  than  the  Northern,  and 
the  negro  than  the  white  race.  The  so-called 
"  artistic  "  temperament  is  merely  a  display  of  the 
characteristics  commonly  attributed  to  women 
and,  until  recently,  male  artists  were  looked  upon 
by  other  men  as  essentially  effeminate.  In  so  far 
as  the  artist  has  a  highly  developed  nervous  or- 
ganization, he  is,  indeed,  like  a  finely  strung 
woman,  but  his  effeminacy  consists,  on  the  other 
hand,  in  an  over-stimulation  of  his  emotions,  and 
in  the  absence  of  the  motives  for  self-control 
which  usually  operate  among  men. 

The  artist,  too,  is  the  victim  of  a  tradition  that 
singers  and  painters  are  inevitably  erratic  and 
self-indulgent.  The  artist  is  by  nature  a  finely 
sensitive  human  organism  and,  since  success  de- 
pends upon  very  early  specialization  in  the  ex- 
pression of  beauty  and  feeling,  the  so-called  manly 
qualities  are  likely  to  remain  in  abeyance  or  to  be 
suppressed.  The  feminine  and  the  masculine 
temperaments  are  at  this  moment  strikingly  typi- 
fied in  two  men  singers  now  at  the  height  of  their 
fame.  One,  born  of  a  southern  race,  and  trained 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT   101 

from  childhood  exclusively  in  the  direction  of 
artistic  expression,  behaves  precisely  in  the  man- 
ner of  a  petted,  extravagant,  emotional  woman. 
The  other,  of  a  northern  race,  educated  in  the 
broad,  practical  manner  of  the  normal  man,  and 
rather  late  in  life  devoted  to  the  exclusive  culture 
of  his  artistic  gift,  is  both  a  great  singer  and  a 
controlled  and  manly  human  being. 

In  much  the  same  way,  the  great  preacher  and 
the  brilliant  orator  are  effeminate,  producing  their 
effects  far  more  by  the  hypnotism  of  high  emo- 
tion than  by  the  ideas  which  they  express.  Like 
actors,  they,  too,  are  subject  to  extreme  reaction 
after  the  culmination  of  any  emotional  effort  in 
which  they  are  often  as  irresponsible  as  children. 
It  is  particularly  suggestive  that  of  all  the  types 
of  men  denominated  "  effeminate,"  the  actor  most 
nearly  resembles  the  type  of  woman  set  up  as  the 
ideal  in  the  past  century.  He,  like  the  woman, 
makes  his  place  in  life  chiefly  by  the  cultivation 
of  manner  and  appearance.  He,  like  her,  de- 
pends for  success  upon  pleasing  rather  than  being 
admirable.  The  "  matinee  idol  "  is  an  extreme 
example  of  character — or,  rather,  perversion  of 
character — by  the  social  necessity  of  being  charm- 
ing and  of  trading  in  assumed  emotions. 

For  this  was  in  truth  what  the  American 
woman  was  driven  to  do  in  the  sphere  offered  in 
the  past  century.  With  the  approach  of  ado- 


102  THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

lescence  and  the  development  of  the  sex  instinct, 
young  people  of  both  sexes  began  to  preen  them- 
selves, the  boy  exaggerating  the  masculine  qual- 
ities to  attract  attention;  the  girl  pretending  to  be 
extremely  delicate,  elusive,  and  emotional  in 
order  to  enhance  her  charms.  One  of  the  chief 
elements  of  courtship  is  surprise;  and  emotional 
outbursts,  whether  of  laughter,  tears,  or  temper, 
were  one  of  the  readiest  means  of  producing  un- 
expected turns  in  personal  relations.  The  lover, 
taken  unaware,  would  succumb  to  the  assault  of 
hysteria  just  as  the  girl's  father  had  done  in 
earlier  years,  and  as  the  husband  would  do  later. 
Hysteria  was,  indeed,  by  virtue  of  convention  and 
cultivation,  as  much  the  weapon  of  the  domestic, 
feminine  type  as  bluffing,  bullying,  and  epithets 
were  "  natural  "  to  men  whose  traditions  did  not 
permit  the  exhibition  of  weaker  forms  of  emo- 
tional expression.  The  cultivation  of  anger  from 
bravado  to  fisticuffs  was  one  of  the  insignia  of 
manliness,  as  tears  and  weakness  were  of  woman- 
liness, though  by  nature  the  boy  might  be  a 
coward  and  the  girl  a  fighter. 

Since  men  liked  docility  in  wives,  marriageable 
girls  must  cultivate  the  appearance  of  gentleness, 
whatever  their  natural  disposition  might  be. 
Just  as  boys  in  the  family  might  throw  their 
clothes  on  the  floor,  expecting  mother  to  pick 
them  up,  while  girls  were  trained  to  put  away 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT   103 

their  own  garments;  so  boys  were  rather  admired 
for  getting  mad  and  getting  into  a  fight,  while 
their  sisters,  under  similar  provocation,  would  be 
called  "  vixens "  and  meet  with  severe  disap- 
proval. The  girl  of  high  temper — which  often 
indicated  superior  strength  of  character — either 
became  the  female  bully  of  the  neighborhood,  or, 
more  often,  learned  to  dissemble  her  disposition 
by  putting  on  a  "  honeyed  "  manner.  One  of 
the  "  sweetest  "  women  I  have  ever  known — 
and  she  was  typical  of  many  of  her  sort — one 
whose  outward  manner  was  invariably  defer- 
ential, sweet,  and  considerate  toward  her  neigh- 
bors and  her  family,  kept  her  husband  in  abject 
fear  of  her  displeasure.  The  temper  which  this 
delicate  and  gentle  appearing  creature  would  un- 
leash in  private  to  get  what  she  wanted  from  a 
refined  and  too-indulgent  husband,  was  incredibly 
savage,  and  was  always  reinforced  with  the  ap- 
peal to  tears.  She  had  been  a  delicate  and 
only  daughter,  over-indulged,  but,  nevertheless, 
brought  up  in  the  practice  of  the  strictest  con- 
ventional behavior.  She  could  and  did  control 
herself  in  every  public  relation,  toward  every  one 
except  her  immediate  family,  but,  when  crossed  by 
them,  she  fought  like  a  man,  with  the  only  weap- 
ons she  knew. 

The  society  manner  was  an  extension  of  the 
habits  acquired  by  girls  for  the  purpose  of  their 


io4  THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

sphere,  which  included  entertaining  along  with 
housekeeping  and  motherhood.  Objectively,  it 
was  intended  to  make  the  guest  have  a  good  time 
by  putting  him  at  ease,  and  at  the  same  time  pleas- 
ing and  piquing  him  with  interest;  subjectively, 
it  was  the  accepted  method  of  displaying  the 
feminine  charm,  of  giving  marriageable  girls  a 
chance  to  make  their  market,  and  of  maintaining 
the  social  status  of  the  household.  It,  therefore, 
demanded  a  careful  attention  to  appearances,  the 
playing  up  of  all  the  attractive  resources  of  the 
feminine  members  of  the  family,  and  the  conceal- 
ment of  whatever  might  not  be  creditable.  If  a 
woman  thus  set  out  to  please  everybody,  even 
within  the  confines  of  her  own  social  circle,  she 
could  never  say  what  she  thought  nor  behave  as 
she  felt.  Indeed,  the  more  charming  she  was, 
the  more  insincere  she  must  necessarily  be.  She 
must  always  be  complimentary  to  her  acquaint- 
ances, praising  their  dress,  belongings,  and  per- 
formances. The  guest  who  loved  music  and 
sang  off  the  key,  must  be  invited  to  perform  as 
cordially  as  if  she  were  a  really  pleasing  musician; 
the  man  who  told  wearisome  anecdotes  must  be 
met  with  all  the  spontaneous  laughter  due  to  wit. 
The  more  tactful  the  woman  contrived  to  be,  the 
more  social  success  she  attained  and,  per  contra, 
the  more  insincere  she  became. 

It    is    evident    that    slow-witted    or    straight- 


THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT  105 

forward  women  would  have  no  chance  at  all  in 
a  society  where  the  coin  of  exchange  was  mutual 
and  graceful  flattery.  In  the  nature  of  things 
the  quickest-witted  women  were  the  most 
capable  of  practising  concealment  of  their 
thoughts,  while  those  of  more  solid  qualities 
would  either  not  be  able  to  attain  the  acrobatic 
grace  necessary  to  social  success,  or  would  have 
an  honest  distaste  for  its  superficiality.  The 
more  intellectual  and  sincere,  and  the  more  rea- 
sonable a  young  woman  was,  the  less  likely  she 
was  to  be  socially  successful,  and  she  must  either 
be  content  to  be  a  "  blue-stocking,"  and  remain 
unmarried,  or  she  must  conceal  her  natural  com- 
mon-sense and  imitate  the  feminine  characteristics 
then  in  vogue. 

Thus  imitation  rather  than  originality  became 
the  keynote  of  women's  lives.  In  a  democratic 
society  composed  largely  of  people  born  in  the 
working  classes,  whose  social  ambitions  were 
chiefly  limited  to  financial  ease  and  the  hope  of 
rising  into  the  next  higher  stratum,  there  were 
many  kinds  of  men,  but  only  two  sorts  of  women. 
The  success  of  a  man  consisted  in  material 
achievement;  of  a  woman  in  appearing  to  be  what 
was  pleasing  to  man  in  order  that  she  might 
be  invited  to  share  his  height.  Men  were  mak- 
ing themselves,  so  to  speak,  of  the  genuine  stuff — 
soft  or  hard,  fine  or  coarse-grained,  of  pine,  oak, 


106  THE  FEMININE  TEMPERAMENT 

or  mahogany;  while  women,  of  whatever  ma- 
terial, must  be  carefully  veneered  with  a  thin 
and  costly  layer  of  unreality — a  sort  of  imitation 
composite,  a  spurious  femininity. 

It  is  certainly  significant  that,  in  proportion  as 
the  women  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  were  re- 
leased from  domestic,  manual  labor,  they  became 
more  and  more  extravagantly  feminine;  and  that 
this  phenomenon  was  a  repetition  of  what  had 
previously  marked  the  behavior  of  every  class 
of  women  at  leisure  throughout  the  world's  his- 
tory. There  is  no  evidence  that  our  manufactur- 
ing grandmothers  of  the  early  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury were  afflicted  with  any  such  degree  of  ef- 
fusive, excitable,  unreasoning  temperament  as 
that  which  characterized  the  strictly  feminine 
ideal  of  their  immediate  descendants.  Among 
Parisians  at  the  present  day,  where  there  is  al- 
most no  line  drawn  between  the  economic  sphere 
of  men  and  women,  and  where  both  husband  and 
wife  among  the  masses  must  work  to  make  a  liv- 
ing, there  is  no  marked  difference  between  them 
in  respect  to  emotional  expression.  The  women 
of  Paris  have  fought  as  savagely  as  men  in  the 
revolutions;  and  French  men  are  notoriously  as 
emotional  as  the  typical  American  woman,  and  as 
unreasoning  when  carried  beyond  self-control. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  social  behavior 
which  is  commonly  described  as  "  typically  femi- 


nine  "  is  an  over-development  of  characters  not 
at  all  uncommon  among  men,  and  often  lacking 
in  women.  When  women  have  been  more  given 
to  superficial  talk  and  gayety  than  men,  it  is 
because  men  desired  them  to  be  so,  and  because  it 
was,  therefore,  to  their  advantage.  If  they  have 
been  accustomed  to  use  hysteria  as  their  weapon 
of  defense,  instead  of  talking  reason  or  using 
their  fists,  it  was  probably  because  they  had  never 
had  either  encouragement  or  opportunity  to  em- 
ploy mind  or  brute  force. 

With  the  opening  of  all  occupations  to  woman, 
and  with  nearly  equal  opportunities  for  intel- 
lectual training,  there  has  been  developed  in  a 
single  generation  a  large  number  of  American 
women  who  are  less  excitable  than  a  Frenchman, 
less  sentimental  than  a  German,  and  less  emo- 
tional than  an  Italian — in  short,  almost  as  rea- 
sonable and  self-poised  as  the  men  of  their  own 
class  and  race. 


CHAPTER  VI 
BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

"There  was  no  reason  why  woman  should  not  labor  in 
primitive  society.  The  forces  which  withdrew  her  from  labor 
were  expressions  of  later  social  traditions.  Speaking  largely, 
these  considerations  were  the  desire  of  men  to  preserve  the 
beauty  of  women,  and  their  desire  to  withdraw  them  from  as- 
sociation with  other  men.  It  is  the  connection  in  thought  and 
fact  between  idle  and  beautiful  women  and  wealth,  indeed, 
which  has  frequently  led  to  the  keeping  of  a  superfluous  num- 
ber of  such  women  as  a  sign  of  wealth." — THOMAS — Sex  and 
Society. 

"  Female  selection  .  .  .  created  a  fantastic  and  extravagant 
male  efflorescence.  Male  selection  .  .  .  produced  a  female  eti- 
olation, diminutive  stature,  beauty  without  utility." — LESTER  F. 
WARD. 

"  The  woman  who  is  beautiful  and  vivacious,  and  not  actu- 
ally feeble-minded,  will  be  endowed  with  all  graces  of  mind 
and  soul  by  three-fourths  of  all  who  see  her  on  the  street, 
while  the  most  highly  intellectual  frump  will  often  be  set  down 
as  stupid  and  crabbed,  purely  on  the  strength  of  her  appearance. 

"  In  fine,  beauty,  to  a  woman  of  average  intelligence  and  char- 
acter ...  is  her  most  valuable  asset  from  a  worldly  stand- 
point. .  .  .  Beauty  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of  the  in- 
ward and  spiritual  grace — health.  .  .  .  " — WOODS  HUTCHINSON. 

THE  types  of  spurious  and  anemic  beauty 
prevalent  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  in  this  coun- 
try may  be  accounted  for  historically  by  the 
conflicting  ideas  inherited,  on  the  one  hand  from 

108 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        109 

ascetic  religion,  on  the  other  through  the  sensual 
luxury  of  higher  English  society.  Behind  both, 
permeating  and  coercing  the  lives  of  women  even 
down  to  the  present  time,  was  the  idea  left  over 
from  still  older  societies,  that  the  bodies  of  women 
were  owned  by  the  men  who  espoused  them, 
which  carried  with  it  the  implication  that  the 
chief  use  of  beauty  is  the  satisfaction  of  sexual 
greed.  One  of  the  foremost  modern  sociologists 
tells  us  that,  if  we  go  back  far  enough,  there  was 
a  long  period  of  time  when  women  had  no  need 
to  be  beautiful  in  order  to  attract  their  mates;  a 
time,  indeed,  when  males  put  on  a  temporary 
beauty  in  order  that  they  might  be  chosen;  and 
that  it  was  not  until  the  power  of  choice  had  been 
transferred  from  females  to  males  that  women  in 
their  turn  began  to  cultivate  those  physical  qual- 
ities which  would  most  attract  men.  Even  then 
relatively  few  women  were  beautiful  in  the  mod- 
ern sense,  and  they  only  for  the  short  period  of 
extreme  youth. 

For  the  ordinary  woman,  beauty  as  an  aim  and 
asset  is  quite  a  modern  idea.  In  the  earlier  ages 
of  mankind,  strength,  fertility,  and  skill  in  handi- 
craft were  the  qualities  most  desired  in  wives,  as 
in  slaves.  When  King  Solomon  pictured  the 
ideal  domestic  woman,  he  did  not  dwell  upon  the 
color  of  her  eyes  and  hair,  nor  upon  the  sym- 
metry of  her  form,  but  described  in  great  detail 


no         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

the  things  she  could  do,  praising  her  indefatigable 
industry,  and  ending  with  these  words: 

"  Favor  is  deceitful  and  beauty  is  vain ;  but  a  woman 
that  feareth  the  Lord,  she  shall  be  praised.  Give  her  of 
the  fruit  of  her  hands  and  let  her  own  works  praise  her 
in  the  gates." 

Beauty  in  a  wife  or  a  slave  was  a  rarity  quite 
out  of  reach  of  the  common  man;  a  thing  of  great 
price,  reserved  for  kings,  princes,  and  the  leaders 
of  armies,  and  to  be  guarded,  like  treasure,  in 
harems.  The  Greek  hero,  Paris,  carried  off 
women  from  Sidon,  not  for  their  beauty,  but  that 
they  might  weave  purple  cloth  for  Helen  of  Troy 
—a  situation  typical  of  the  relative  positions  of 
the  Beauty  and  the  ordinary  woman. 

There  was,  in  the  ancient  world,  and  even  quite 
down  to  recent  times,  no  economic  surplus  upon 
which  society  could  fall  back.  War  and  waste, 
pestilence  and  the  lack  of  mechanical  inventions, 
made  it  necessary  not  only  to  breed  great  num- 
bers of  human  beings,  but  that  men,  women,  and 
children — all  except  a  small  upper  class — should 
work  incessantly.  To  the  ordinary  man,  who 
could  afford  only  one  wife,  strength  and  fertility 
were  highly  important;  and  though  he  might 
prefer  the  looks  of  one  maid  above  another,  his 
taste  was  likely  to  be  overcome  by  his  judgment 
or  nullified  by  family  and  financial  considerations. 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        in 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  Era,  beauty 
in  women  was  associated  exclusively  with  luxury 
and  sensuality — a  fact  which  accounts  for  the  an- 
tipathy toward  them  evinced  by  certain  apostolic 
writers.  Among  the  poverty-stricken  masses  of 
the  later  Roman  Empire,  severe  labor  and  early 
marriage  destroyed  in  girls,  almost  before  they 
were  grown,  such  ephemeral  prettiness  as  they 
might  possess.  The  ascetic  reaction  of  the  early 
Christian  Church,  during  the  Middle  Ages,  from 
the  frank  sensuality  of  the  Roman  world,  empha- 
sized still  further  the  purely  animal  aspects  of 
female  beauty.  With  each  recurrent  wave  of 
social  reform  in  the  Christianized  world  the  es- 
sential relation  between  good  looks  and  wicked- 
ness was  reiterated  until  it  culminated  a  second 
time  among  the  Puritans — as  it  had  the  first  time 
among  the  ascetics — in  a  belief  that  women,  par- 
ticularly attractive  women,  were  agents  of  the 
devil. 

Although  Puritanism  had  begun  to  loosen  its 
hold  on  the  minds  of  American  men  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  theory  that 
women  were  tempters  and  a  menace  to  every  good 
man,  was  still  generally  accepted.  The  natural 
instinct  of  youth  to  admire  and  to  choose  the 
more  attractive  maiden  was  morbidly  distorted  by 
the  religious  teaching  of  the  day  into  a  sinful  sug- 
gestion, and  robbed  of  all  its  innocent  joy.  This 


ii2         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

unwholesome  suppression  of  the  animal  side  of 
human  nature  produced  a  sort  of  subterranean 
vulgarity  in  the  majority  of  common  people,  and  a 
revulsion  of  exaggerated  shame  in  those  of 
greater  refinement.  The  fear  of  loveliness  in 
women  was  extended  to  other  forms  of  beauty  in 
American  life — for  Puritanism  had  put  a  ban, 
too,  upon  painting,  sculpture,  music,  and  the 
drama.  All  were  still  regarded  as  frivolous,  if 
not  dangerous  to  morals;  and  thus  our  parents 
and  grandparents  were  almost  destitute  of  any 
form  of  artistic  pleasure. 

But  even  if  there  had  been  the  same  racial  and 
temperamental  sense  of  beauty  as  that  pervading 
the  French  and  Italian  populace  of  the  same  pe- 
riod, the  life  of  a  pioneer  community  was  neces- 
sarily ugly.  The  struggle  with  nature  for  the 
crude  necessities  of  living  devastated  alike  what- 
ever beauty  of  landscape  or  of  human  nature  there 
might  be,  and  left  scant  leisure  or  desire  for  the 
beautiful. 

The  higher  manifestations  of  beauty,  whether 
in  art  or  in  womanhood,  are  necessarily  of  slow 
growth,  and  are  always  coincident  with  a  certain 
degree  of  material  ease.  In  proportion  as  the 
New  World  became  prosperous,  the  mere 
abundance  of  good  food,  the  prevalence  of  rela- 
tive peace  and  plenty  throughout  a  selected  pop- 
ulation, produced  a  better  grade  of  human  being. 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        113 

And  as  the  lives  of  ordinary  women  became 
easier,  with  more  comfortable  conditions  of  living 
and  the  removal  of  some  of  the  hardest  domestic 
labor  to  factories,  the  young  were  born  with  a 
greater  degree  of  physical  symmetry,  and  were 
able  to  keep  it  through  adolescence  and  even  into 
adult  years. 

Nevertheless,  while  the  general  average  of 
bodily  perfection  was  rising,  its  higher  realization 
was  hindered  by  the  tyranny  of  religious  tradi- 
tions and  the  distorted  image  of  what  beauty  in 
women  consisted  in.  The  entirely  inconsistent 
types  of  physique  which  had  survived  from 
wholly  different  classes  in  the  Old  World,  were 
still  the  models  for  imitation.  The  "  over- 
sexed cow-mother "  of  medieval  Europe — as 
Hutchinson  calls  her — found  her  analogue  in 
America  in  the  mother  of  a  large  family,  whose 
too-frequent  pregnancies  and  incessant  industry 
left  her  at  middle  age  either  an  exhausted, 
wrinkled  creature,  without  a  grace  of  body  or 
mind;  or  else  a  shapeless  bulk  of  flesh,  more  like 
a  breeding  animal  than  a  human  being.  At  the 
antipodes  of  such  a  woman  was  the  attenuated 
fine-lady,  modeled  upon  the  type  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century — as  feeble,  affected,  and 
under-sexed  as  the  breeding  mother  was  vital. 
A  third  type,  the  French  fashion-plate  woman, 
who  was,  in  fact,  only  slightly  modified  from  the 


ii2         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

unwholesome  suppression  of  the  animal  side  of 
human  nature  produced  a  sort  of  subterranean 
vulgarity  in  the  majority  of  common  people,  and  a 
revulsion  of  exaggerated  shame  in  those  of 
greater  refinement.  The  fear  of  loveliness  in 
women  was  extended  to  other  forms  of  beauty  in 
American  life — for  Puritanism  had  put  a  ban, 
too,  upon  painting,  sculpture,  music,  and  the 
drama.  All  were  still  regarded  as  frivolous,  if 
not  dangerous  to  morals;  and  thus  our  parents 
and  grandparents  were  almost  destitute  of  any 
form  of  artistic  pleasure. 

But  even  if  there  had  been  the  same  racial  and 
temperamental  sense  of  beauty  as  that  pervading 
the  French  and  Italian  populace  of  the  same  pe- 
riod, the  life  of  a  pioneer  community  was  neces- 
sarily ugly.  The  struggle  with  nature  for  the 
crude  necessities  of  living  devastated  alike  what- 
ever beauty  of  landscape  or  of  human  nature  there 
might  be,  and  left  scant  leisure  or  desire  for  the 
beautiful. 

The  higher  manifestations  of  beauty,  whether 
in  art  or  in  womanhood,  are  necessarily  of  slow 
growth,  and  are  always  coincident  with  a  certain 
degree  of  material  ease.  In  proportion  as  the 
New  World  became  prosperous,  the  mere 
abundance  of  good  food,  the  prevalence  of  rela- 
tive peace  and  plenty  throughout  a  selected  pop- 
ulation, produced  a  better  grade  of  human  being. 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        113 

And  as  the  lives  of  ordinary  women  became 
easier,  with  more  comfortable  conditions  of  living 
and  the  removal  of  some  of  the  hardest  domestic 
labor  to  factories,  the  young  were  born  with  a 
greater  degree  of  physical  symmetry,  and  were 
able  to  keep  it  through  adolescence  and  even  into 
adult  years. 

Nevertheless,  while  the  general  average  of 
bodily  perfection  was  rising,  its  higher  realization 
was  hindered  by  the  tyranny  of  religious  tradi- 
tions and  the  distorted  image  of  what  beauty  in 
women  consisted  in.  The  entirely  inconsistent 
types  of  physique  which  had  survived  from 
wholly  different  classes  in  the  Old  World,  were 
still  the  models  for  imitation.  The  "  over- 
sexed cow-mother "  of  medieval  Europe — as 
Hutchinson  calls  her — found  her  analogue  in 
America  in  the  mother  of  a  large  family,  whose 
too-frequent  pregnancies  and  incessant  industry 
left  her  at  middle  age  either  an  exhausted, 
wrinkled  creature,  without  a  grace  of  body  or 
mind;  or  else  a  shapeless  bulk  of  flesh,  more  like 
a  breeding  animal  than  a  human  being.  At  the 
antipodes  of  such  a  woman  was  the  attenuated 
fine-lady,  modeled  upon  the  type  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century — as  feeble,  affected,  and 
under-sexed  as  the  breeding  mother  was  vital. 
A  third  type,  the  French  fashion-plate  woman, 
who  was,  in  fact,  only  slightly  modified  from  the 


u6         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

to  meet  the  requirements  of  Puritan  modesty. 
No  better  illustration  could  be  found  of  the  con- 
flicting traditions  which  ignorant  women  were 
blindly  following. 

Without  attempting  to  account  for  the  vagaries 
of  modesty — a  subject  upon  which  much  has  al- 
ready been  written — the  effect  of  a  single  conven- 
tion upon  the  health  and  beauty  of  women  may  be 
dwelt  upon.  Throughout  the  past  century,  to  be 
obviously  two-legged  was  to  be  immodest.  The 
Chinese  woman — as  modest  and  feminine  as  any 
of  her  sex  in  the  world,  perhaps— has  had  the  use 
of  her  legs,  if  not  of  her  feet,  for  thousands  of 
years,  but  the  American  woman  has  always  had  to 
pretend  that  she  had  only  one.  The  peasant 
woman  of  northern  Europe,  though  burdened 
with  heavy  petticoats,  might  exhibit  her  body  be- 
low the  knee,  but  the  "  free  "  woman  of  the  new 
democracy  had  to  conceal,  as  far  as  possible,  even 
her  ankles. 

This  convention  restricted  every  activity,  and 
was,  unquestionably,  one  of  the  factors  in  the 
deterioration  of  the  health  of  American  women. 
For  three  hundred  years  western  women  have 
ridden  on  horseback  sidewise,  with  feet  enveloped 
in  a  voluminous  skirt,  solely  because  a  French 
Princess  long  ago  set  the  fashion  to  conceal  her 
own  deformed  spine.  Because  the  roues  of  a 
decadent  society  attached  sexual  significance  to 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        117 

ankles,  the  American  girl  walked  encased  in  heavy 
drapery,  which  compelled  a  narrow,  uncertain 
tread.  Millions  of  women  lifted  their  petticoats 
billions  of  times  in  the  course  of  their  lives;  while 
housewives  scoured  their  floors,  hampered  by  the 
uniform  of  their  sex,  and  endangered  their  lives 
whenever  they  got  in  or  out  of  a  vehicle;  all  for 
no  other  reason  than  that  the  particular  form  of 
modesty  inculcated  by  Puritan  society  had  tabooed 
legs  in  women.  The  early  advocates  of  Women's 
Rights  were  right,  if  not  wise,  in  associating  a 
bifurcated  costume  with  equality  and  freedom, 
but  it  was  equally  necessary  to  the  production  of 
true  beauty. 

Shame  and  inactivity,  thus  linked  together,  pro- 
duced a  strangely  distorted  and  bloodless  creature 
whose  only  sign  of  real  loveliness  was  a  pretty 
face.  The  grace  of  symmetry  and  the  exhilaration 
of  free  motion  were  denied  not  only  to  women 
of  the  leisure  classes,  but  to  working-women  as 
well,  because  every  woman  in  America  was  try- 
ing "  to  be  a  lady,"  and  the  conventions  of  the 
Fore-time  had  so  ordained.  Even  when  the 
Puritan  regime  declined  and  women  were  begin- 
ning to  be  released  from  the  older  conventions, 
they  were  at  the  same  time  presented  with  a 
vicious  foreign  model  by  the  vogue  of  fashions 
which  had  been  brought  in  to  promote  journalism 
and  manufacture. 


n8         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

Convention  has  this  peculiarity:  it  is  no  sooner 
established  than  it  tends  to  become  exaggerated; 
probably  for  the  reason  pointed  out  by  Darwin, 
that  men  like  what  they  are  accustomed  to,  car- 
ried to  a  moderate  extreme.  In  the  United 
States,  before  the  Civil  War,  the  almost  total  ab- 
sence of  art  education  in  any  form — painting, 
sculpture,  and  decoration — caused  men  to  be  satis- 
fied with  the  most  perverted  and  crude  standards 
of  pseudo-beauty  in  women.  The  pinched  waist, 
the  flat  chest,  and  protruding  abdomen,  the  bodily 
outline  wholly  destroyed  by  drapery  in  the  wrong 
places,  were  merely  symptoms  of  the  general 
crudity  of  taste  displayed  in  the  architecture  of 
the  same  period.  Doric  columns  reproduced  in 
wood,  medieval  towers  in  shingles,  and  the  ginger- 
bread decorations  of  the  planing-mill,  represented 
a  riot  of  untrained,  artistic  ambition. 

This  period  of  base  reproduction  and  violent 
novelties  in  art  did  give,  fortunately,  an  oppor- 
tunity for  the  release  of  varied  and  less  conven- 
tional types  of  beauty  among  women.  Red  hair, 
which  for  several  generations  had  been  considered 
ugly — all  but  improper — began  to  be  tolerated 
and,  among  people  who  had  acquired  some  slight 
culture  in  foreign  art,  was  even  admired.  The 
more  permanent  aspects  of  physical  loveliness — 
grace  of  outline,  purity  and  richness  of  color — 
gained  some  attention.  Two  extreme  types  of 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        119 

women — the  household  drudge  who  stood  for  ef- 
ficiency without  beauty,  and  the  doll-woman  who 
represented  beauty  without  utility — began  to  go 
out  of  fashion.  For  as  the  new  types  of  men 
produced  by  democracy  became  prosperous  and 
worldly,  they  wanted  something  more  in  a  wife 
than  a  homely  sex-mate  and  servant;  or,  than  a 
pretty  but  half-sick  and  helpless  fool. 

There  began  to  emerge  among  us  a  conception 
of  human  beauty  which  might  have  higher  reason 
than  sexuality  for  its  existence.  The  type  of 
beauty  developed  among  the  Greeks  had  lacked, 
so  far  as  women  were  concerned,  essential  ele- 
ments. While  exhibiting  symmetry,  color,  and 
grace,  it  had  been  greatly  deficient  in  expression; 
that  is  to  say,  it  was  the  perfection  of  the  physical 
female  without  the  capacity  for  varied  emotion 
and  intelligence  which  is  an  inseparable  part  of 
the  modern  ideal.  The  Venus  of  Melos  would 
probably  attract  very  little  attention  now  as  a 
woman  in  cultivated  society,  though  she  might 
serve  as  an  artist's  model  for  life  study. 

Aside  from  the  sensual  and  ascetic  traditions 
which  largely  determined  the  conventional  ideas 
of  the  earlier  part  of  the  past  century,  another 
influence  of  quite  a  different  sort  was  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  feminine  physique.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  science,  particularly  biological 
science,  has  assured  the  emancipation  of  woman; 


120         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

nor  that  freedom  from  the  limitations  and  de- 
formities of  the  domestic  tradition  was  impossible 
until  the  facts  of  evolution  had  been  discovered. 
For  the  perpetuation  of  the  weakness  and  sub- 
jection of  women  was  certain  so  long  as  the 
Christian  scriptures  continued  to  be  literally  in- 
terpreted; around  them  had  been  built  a  wall  of 
social  convention  which  was  all  but  impregnable. 
So  long  as  the  doctrine  that  "  the  woman  is  the 
glory  of  the  man  "  dominated  the  Church  and, 
therefore,  mankind,  so  long  women  would  con- 
tinue to  be  weak  because  they  were  dependent; 
so  long  would  they  mold  themselves  into  what 
men  wanted  them  to  be,  rather  than  develop  their 
own  capacities.  In  less  than  one  century  science 
undermined  the  view  that  the  female  was  neces- 
sarily weak,  bringing  to  light  a  mass  of  proof 
that  among  many  orders  of  animals  and  that 
among  primitive  men  she  was  strong,  even 
stronger  than  the  male.  Physiology  and  hygiene, 
medicine  and  bacteriology,  have  uncovered  the 
hidden  sources  of  the  physical  weaknesses  of 
modern  women,  and  have  demonstrated  that  the 
greater  part  of  them,  perhaps  all,  are  pre- 
ventable. 

At  the  present  day,  health  and  beauty  are  in 
our  minds  very  nearly  inseparable,  but  when  we 
go  back  two  or  three  generations  we  read  con- 
stantly about  the  delicacy  and  ill-health  of  well- 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        121 

known  society  beauties.  The  very  term  formerly 
in  polite  use — female  complaints — stood  for  the 
physical  poverty  of  womankind.  A  perfectly 
normal  function,  like  menstruation,  which  rarely 
gave  discomfort  to  primitive  women,  or  to  women 
of  active,  outdoor  life,  had  come  to  be  regarded 
as  a  periodic  sickness.  Girls  were  imbued  with 
the  idea  that  it  must  inevitably  incapacitate  them, 
and  this  pervasive  suggestion,  combined  with  bad 
physical  habits,  heavy  and  constrictive  clothing, 
and  inactivity,  made  it  so.  The  period  of  gesta- 
tion, which,  among  Indian  and  peasant  women, 
and  even  among  the  vigorous  farmers'  wives  of  a 
hundred  years  ago,  caused  relatively  slight  incon- 
venience, had  taken  on  the  aspect  of  a  prolonged, 
chronic  illness. 

As  the  young  girl  became  anemic,  and  the  young 
wife  inactive,  for  want  of  vigorous,  compulsory 
outdoor  occupation,  pregnancy  became  a  serious 
discomfort,  and  childbirth  a  terror.  At  the  very 
time  when  the  prospective  mother  should  have 
been  developing  her  abdominal  muscles  and  stim- 
ulating her  nutrition  to  the  utmost,  the  conven- 
tional prudery  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  dictated 
a  careful  concealment  of  her  condition.  Among 
South  European  peoples  prospective  motherhood 
is  a  subject  for  public  congratulation,  but  in  Amer- 
ica the  "  sacred  duty "  and  the  "  only  worthy 
sphere  "  was  a  thing  to  be  concealed — a  subject 


122         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

of  jest  and  shameful  innuendo.  This  degenerate 
prudery  went  so  far  in  the  middle  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  that  many  girls  were  married  in 
complete  ignorance  of  their  wifely  functions,  and 
were,  in  consequence,  the  victims  of  licensed, 
though  unintentional,  rape. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  girls,  only  partially 
informed  about  their  physical  destiny,  and  observ- 
ing, as  they  grew  up,  the  nasty  attitude  toward 
the  pregnant  woman,  and  her  ashamed  aspect, 
would  acquire  a  repulsion  for  everything  con- 
nected with  motherhood.  After  overhearing  the 
painful  details  of  the  discomforts  of  pregnancy 
and  of  agonizing  childbirth,  they  could  not  help 
looking  forward  to  marriage  with  fear.  Such 
girls  would  want  to  marry,  but  they  would  be 
afraid  of  the  consequences.  It  was  not  surpris- 
ing that  women  began  to  search  for  and  to  take 
advantage  of  devices  for  preventing  conception, 
nor  that  men  who  loved  their  wives  should  abet 
them  in  doing  so. 

At  the  time  when  the  sciences  were  beginning 
to  make  their  first  helpful  applications  to  common 
life,  the  health  of  American  women  was  at  a  very 
low  point.  Pale,  undeveloped,  over-feminized 
wives  were  finding  themselves  wholly  inadequate 
to  the  bearing  and  rearing  of  even  small  fam- 
ilies, and  the  suggestive  modesties  which  were  de- 
manded of  conventionally  educated  girls  pre- 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        123 

vented  them  from  attaining  any  high  degree  of 
health.  Such  a  state  of  things  might  have  gone 
on  indefinitely,  to  the  extinction  of  the  native- 
born  American,  perhaps,  but  for  the  advance  of 
medicine,  the  gradual  spread  of  hygienic  knowl- 
edge, and  their  effects  in  liberating  younger  women 
from  the  traditions  of  prudery  and  inactivity. 

But  the  process  of  freeing  women  from  the 
tradition  of  weakness  and  bodily  shame  is  a  very 
slow  one.  Nearly  two  generations  have  elapsed 
since  the  Bloomer  costume  was  mobbed;  and  it 
is  only  in  exceptional  places  and  for  special  pur- 
poses, such  as  horseback-riding,  swimming,  and 
gymnastics,  that  young  women  are  permitted  to 
reveal  their  two  legs.  Even  yet  the  prospective 
mother  must  hide  herself  like  a  thief  or  a  pros- 
titute till  after  dark  during  the  latter  time  of  her 
pregnancy. 

The  majority  of  people  who  lived  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  did  not  die  of  tuberculosis, 
typhoid  fever,  cancer,  or  even  in  accidents  or  in 
war — but  in  their  beds  after  a  period  of  lingering 
degeneration.  In  their  last  years  they  reaped  the 
accumulated  results  of  the  petty,  physiological 
misdeeds  of  their  earlier  life.  It  is  a  fact,  too 
little  dwelt  upon  in  discussing  the  physiological 
limitations  of  womenkind,  that  all  the  minor 
causes  of  ill-health  have  operated  with  much 
greater  injury  upon  them  than  upon  men  in  civ- 


124         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

ilized  life.  A  recent  writer  enumerates  a  few  of 
what  he  calls  the  commonest  physical  peccadilloes : 

"  The  respiration  of  a  very  little  impure  air  eighteen 
times  a  minute  eighteen  times  a  day  for  twenty  years;  a  few 
foods  preserved  by  injurious  substances;  teeth  irregularly 
brushed;  stuffy  sleeping- rooms ;  living-rooms  excessively 
upholstered;  carpets  full  of  dust;  domestic  atmosphere  at 
once  motionless,  furnace-dried,  and  kept  at  high  tem- 
perature; clothing  impervious  to  sun  and  air;  insufficient 
baths;  insufficient  exercise;  late  hours;  overwork;  over- 
eating; under-drinking  (of  water)  ;  eating  and  drinking 
together  instead  of  separately;  and  patent  medicines;  not 
to  mention  in  the  case  of  woman,  the  strangling  of  her 
vital  organs  by  the  stylish  harness  of  society — these  are 
a  few  of  those  so-called  '  negligible  transgressions.'  " 

Nearly  all  of  these  degenerative  influences  af- 
fected the  women  of  the  past  generation  more 
than  they  do  the  women  of  the  present;  but  it 
still  remains  true  that,  owing  to  conventionalities 
of  dress  and  behavior,  to  the  sedentary  character 
of  their  occupations,  and  their  relatively  inactive, 
indoor  lives,  they  suffer  from  them  far  more  seri- 
ously than  men. 

It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  social  development 
that,  while  ascetic  religion  has  been  a  most  power- 
ful hindrance  to  women,  the  stage  has  become  one 
of  the  strongest  influences  to  elevate  our  ideals 
of  pure  beauty.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  the  drama  was  generally  regarded 


125 

in  America  as  an  evil  influence,  and  an  actress  as 
a  foredoomed  prostitute.  But  in  the  last  hun- 
dred years  the  stage  has  drawn  to  itself  the  high- 
est productions  of  literary  and  scenic  art,  and  the 
acting  profession  has  produced  some  of  the 
noblest  human  beings  of  our  time.  The  vulgar- 
ities which  appealed  to  the  audiences  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  are  no  longer  tolerated  in 
the  better  theaters;  even  Shakespeare  has  to  be 
expurgated.  While  there  is  still  too  frequent  ap- 
peal to  the  obscene  mind  in  the  poorer  and 
cheaper  theaters,  the  level  of  dramatic  art  is  con- 
stantly rising.  Dancing,  from  being  an  appeal 
merely  to  the  lascivious  imagination,  has  reached 
the  plane  of  an  art  as  fine  in  its  tone  as  Grecian 
sculpture.  The  French  ballet,  with  its  affected 
and  tortured  movements,  and  its  suggestive  cos- 
tume, is  being  more  and  more  replaced  by  posture 
and  folk  dancing,  in  which  the  sensual  is  sub- 
ordinated to  beauty  of  line  and  form,  to  grace  of 
movement,  and  to  picturesque  grouping. 

All  this  has  had  a  perceptible  effect  on  the  gen- 
eral standards  of  modesty,  beauty,  and  taste,  and 
especially  among  women.  In  proportion  as  the 
stage  has  become  more  "  respectable,"  it  has  been 
patronized  by  the  religiously  minded,  conven- 
tional middle  classes,  who  have  learned  from  it 
what  a  really  beautiful  human  creature  may  be. 
The  average  American  at  the  time  of  the  Cen- 


126         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

tennial,  1876,  had  seen  once,  or  twice  perhaps, 
a  few  bronze  monuments,  possibly  a  single  gal- 
lery of  poor  and  very  proper  paintings,  and  had 
probably  never  seen  a  nude  statue  in  his  life.  The 
cultivation  of  the  eye  to  enjoy  symmetry  and  un- 
trammeled  grace  has  come  chiefly  through 
dramatic  art  in  this  country.  As  the  public  be- 
came accustomed  to  really  beautiful  women  on 
the  stage,  the  tightly  corseted,  flat-chested,  thick- 
hipped  figure,  encased  in  mosaic  clothing  from  the 
ears  to  the  toes,  began  to  look  ugly. 

The  dress  of  the  fashionable  woman,  too,  has 
been  revolutionized  by  the  artistic  ideal — a  move- 
ment in  which  actresses  have  set  the  model  and 
led  the  way.  In  the  pursuit  of  novelty  and  to 
enhance  her  own  personal  charm,  each  actress 
has  compelled  the  dressmakers — educated  by  the 
French  fashion-plate — to  devise  new  and  ever 
more  graceful  draperies,  and  more  exquisite  com- 
binations of  color;  until  now  the  whole  field  of 
Oriental  and  European  art  is  studied  in  pursuit 
of  fresh  ideas. 

The  new  idea,  to  be  sure,  when  once  offered 
for  admiration  on  the  stage,  is  quickly  snatched 
up  by  manufacturers  and  designers,  and  usually 
exaggerated,  if  not  perverted,  into  some  mon- 
strous travesty  of  style.  But  at  the  swift  pace  of 
modern  changes  in  fashion,  the  most  extreme,  al- 
though it  is  the  first  to  be  adopted  by  persons  of 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        127 

crude  taste,  is  also  the  first  to  be  supplanted  by 
another.  And,  owing  to  the  enormous  variations 
produced  in  any  one  season  in  a  single  fashion, 
the  various  grades  of  taste,  from  crude  to  highly 
refined,  will  find  satisfaction. 

But  the  most  conspicuous  contribution  of  the 
stage  to  the  emancipation  of  women  lies  in  its 
liberation  of  legs  and  torso.  Good  legs  are  an 
asset  to  a  chorus  girl,  and,  the  city  population  hav- 
ing become  accustomed  to  seeing  them  unashamed 
at  the  theater,  is  no  longer  shocked  at  a  moderate 
display  of  ankles  on  the  street.  The  corset,  worn 
originally  for  the  distortion  of  the  body  to  make 
its  sex  characters  more  conspicuous,  became  con- 
ventionalized in  this  exaggerated  style.  The 
fashion-plate  figure  admired  in  the  last  century 
was  truly  hideous — as  far  from  flexibility  and 
grace  as  the  form  of  the  lady  of  the  Civil  War 
period  was  from  that  of  the  Laughing  Bacchante. 
But  stage  beauties,  as  a  mere  matter  of  business, 
have  demanded  innumerable  variations,  which 
have  stimulated  the  corsetiere  to  devise  models 
for  mitigating  the  most  imperfect  figures.  The 
straight-front  corset,  an  invention  for  distributing 
the  abdominal  flesh,  has,  in  ten  years,  revolution- 
ized the  ideas  of  every  country  woman  in  Amer- 
ica, as  to  what  a  "  good  figure "  should  be. 
Thousands  of  women  have  seen  Madame  Sara 
Bernhardt,  when  long  past  middle  age,  play 


128         BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS 

L'Aiglon,  the  part  of  a  youth  of  nineteen;  and 
many  more  thousands  read  the  interviews  in 
which  she  explained  how  she  kept  her  youthful 
figure  by  muscular  activity  and  hygienic  living. 
Such  examples,  and  the  industrious  careers  of  a 
large  number  of  actresses  at  the  present  day,  are 
having  an  astonishing  reaction  upon  the  physique 
and  dress  of  young  women  of  the  domestic  type. 

In  addition  to  the  correction  and  cultivation  of 
taste  the  stage  has  had  an  incalculable  influence 
upon  the  standards  of  health  among  women.  The 
actress,  the  dancer,  and  the  prima  donna  must 
have,  before  all  talent,  strength  to  endure  the 
training  and  the  hardships  of  her  profession. 
However  sensual  and  violent  her  temper  may  be, 
to  win  success  she  must  deny  her  appetites  and 
work — work  incredibly  hard.  With  the  never- 
ceasing  curiosity  of  the  general  public  regarding 
the  lives  of  stage  people,  these  facts  have  become 
known,  and  in  their  dissemination  have  educated 
every  stage-struck  girl  as  well  as  many  feeble 
amateurs. 

The  modification  of  religious  dogma,  the  dis- 
coveries of  science  and  their  application  to  com- 
mon life,  the  development  of  dramatic  art,  and 
the  practice  of  physical  exercise — these  and  other 
less  important  influences  are  the  first  steps  toward 
separating  physical  beauty  from  its  exclusive 
association  with  sensual  images.  Health  and 


BEAUTY  AND  WEAKNESS        129 

beauty  are  becoming  legitimate  aims  for  the  en- 
richment of  life,  as  well  as  for  the  elevation  of  the 
race.  Scientific  discovery  and  medical  skill  are 
emancipating  women  from  the  enervating  com- 
plaints once  thought  inherent  in  femaleness,  but 
due  in  fact  to  constricting  conditions  of  life,  to 
over-breeding,  and  to  the  contamination  of 
venereal  diseases.  Physical  training,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  body  by  systematic  activity,  which  has 
only  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  become  ac- 
ceptable, is  doing  away  with  the  prudery  in  which 
girls  were  once  reared,  and  preparing  them  for  a 
kind  of  motherhood  no  longer  blindly  instinctive, 
but  adequate  and  intelligent.  Beauty  is  no  longer 
merely  "  vain,"  nor  favor  inevitably  deceitful — 
and  the  fruit  of  her  hands  shall  yet  praise  her. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

"  We  have  plucked  up  a  little  spirit  and  have  even  signed  a 
sort  of  feeble  declaration  of  independence  against  our  old 
enemies,  French  fashions  and  perfect  uniformity  in  dress.  How 
well  I  remember  a  certain  spring  season  in  my  childhood,  when 
every  woman  between  the  age  of  fourteen  and  forty  wore  a 
yellow  straw  bonnet  trimmed  with  green  ribbon  on  the  outside 
and  pink  on  the  inside!  And  that  summer,  after  Napoleon  III.'s 
campaign  in  Italy,  when  no  respectable  person  thought  of  hav- 
ing her  bonnet  trimmed  with  any  other  color  than  solferino  or 
magenta.  .  .  . 

"  The  study  of  dress  in  these  days  is  an  approved  branch  of 
female  education.  It  has  never  been  wholly  neglected,  only 
women  have  too  often  pursued  it  with  their  eyes  shut,  and  now 
they  mean  to  keep  them  open.  .  .  . 

"  Whether  Woman  is  behind  Man  in  civilization  because  she 
pays  an  attention  to  dress  which  she  has  long  ago  disused,  or 
whether  her  devotion  to  it  is  because  Man  requires  her  to  be 
robed  in  gay  attire  .  .  .  we  are  expected  in  this  age  to  pay  more 
attention  to  dress  than  men  do,  and  are  justified  in  doing  so — 
within  limits." — From  Social  Customs — FLORENCE  HOWE  HALL, 
1887. 

"  To  get  emancipated  from  Man,  or  the  political  sovereignty 
of  men  in  the  State,  is  a  very  small  matter  and  a  victory  quite 
insignificant  compared  with  the  conquest  of  Fashion." — HORACE 
BUSH  NELL. 

THE  excessive  and  universal  interest  in  dress 
displayed  by  American  women,  has  been,  like 
many  other  qualities,  denominated  "  feminine," 

130 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         131 

but  has  been  only  superficially  accounted  for. 
Whether,  as  the  sociologists  suggest,  it  be 
analogous  to  the  gorgeous  pelage  and  plumage 
assumed  by  certain  animals  in  the  mating  season; 
or  whether  it  be  associated  with  caste  and  class 
distinctions  in  society,  one  primary  factor  must 
not  be  overlooked.  Before  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury luxury  in  dress  and  toilet  was  quite  as  char- 
acteristic of  men  of  any  given  rank  as  of  their 
womankind.  Since  the  decline  of  elaborate 
clothing  among  men  is  historically  so  recent,  the 
significant  point  to  be  raised  is:  why  has  not  the 
modern  woman's  interest  in  personal  adornment 
declined  in  the  same  degree? 

In  the  discussion  of  dress,  as  of  politics,  the 
American  and  the  French  Revolutions  form  a 
convenient  landmark.  When  the  coterie  of 
Marie  Antoinette  played  at  dairying  in  the  cos- 
tumes of  shepherds  and  maids,  it  might  be  re- 
garded as  a  mere  vagary  of  idle  persons  in  search 
of  a  new  sensation.  But  when  the  whole  French 
nation  assumed  the  dress  of  plain  citizens;  and 
when  the  American  gentleman  laid  aside  his 
peruke  and  lace  ruffles,  and  went  to  work  in  the 
costume  of  the  common  man,  it  signified  that  the 
theories  of  democracy  had  taken  a  profound  hold 
on  the  human  mind.  In  the  United  States  the  ab- 
sence of  a  large  aristocratic  class  and  the  hardy 
life  of  a  pioneer  population  tended  to  reduce 


1 32         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

men's  clothing  to  the  simple  requirements  of  util- 
ity and  cleanliness.  Even  for  men  of  wealth  and 
station,  a  single  "  costume  de  luxe  "  served  every 
purpose.  Thus,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  dress  as  an  important  pursuit  in 
life  was  confined  to  a  small  class  of  fine  ladies, 
while  the  women  of  the  mercantile  and  agricul- 
tural masses,  busied  with  domestic  manufactures, 
gave  scarcely  more  attention  to  fripperies  and 
changes  in  style  than  did  their  menkind. 

In  all  ages  clothing  has  been  one  of  the  first 
items  of  living  to  be  affected  by  increasing  pros- 
perity. In  proportion  as  the  family  surplus  in- 
creased among  Americans,  it  was  exhibited  in 
richer  materials  and  greater  variety  of  clothes — 
at  first  for  use  on  Sundays  and  gala  days  alone. 
But  as  the  poor,  the  well-to-do,  and  the  rich  were 
more  clearly  distinguished  into  classes,  elegance 
in  dress  became  in  this  country,  as  elsewhere,  the 
mark  of  the  least  industrious  section  of  society. 
And  in  the  latter  part  of  the  century,  as  we  shall 
see,  an  occupation  in  itself  for  the  semi-idle  and 
protected  woman.  The  coincidence  of  great 
prosperity,  arising  in  part  from  universal  habits 
of  industry  among  all  classes  of  men,  with  the 
gradual  release  of  large  numbers  of  women  from 
severe  household  labor  by  the  removal  of  manu- 
facture from  the  home  to  the  factory,  gave  women 
money  and  leisure.  Having  slight  intellectual  im- 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         133 

pulse  toward  self-culture,  and  no  conception  of 
philanthropy  as  a  career,  such  as  now  engages 
much  of  the  leisure  of  protected  women,  they  de- 
voted themselves  to  the  elaboration  of  their 
clothes. 

The  ideals  set  before  the  boy  and  the  girl  by 
the  parents  and  the  teachers  of  this  period  were 
diametrically  opposed:  the  boy  must  prepare  to 
do  something,  the  girl  merely  to  be  attractively 
feminine.  One  aimed  directly  at  achievement, 
the  other  had  no  definite  aim,  but  was  encouraged 
to  concentrate  her  attention  on  manners  and  ap- 
pearance. Indirectly  a  premium  was  put  on 
prettiness  and  docility  in  girls,  with  a  covert  sug- 
gestion that  they  might  find  an  ultimate  reward 
in  marriage.  Among  young  men,  marriage  was 
only  one,  and  by  no  means  the  first,  of  several 
aims  in  life;  while  among  girls — though  not  often 
consciously  acknowledged — it  was  the  chief  am- 
bition, because,  on  the  one  hand,  wifehood  and 
motherhood  was  the  accepted  and  only  creditable 
career,  and,  on  the  other,  there  was  no  wage- 
earning  occupation,  as  there  is  now,  offered  as  an 
alternative. 

Since  young  women  were  properly  the  chosen, 
and  not  the  choosers  of  their  fate,  they  necessarily 
resorted  to  every  indirect  method  of  attracting  a 
partner.  Striking  and  elaborate  apparel  was  the 
easiest  and  most  conspicuous  means  of  allurement. 


i34         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

This  efflorescence — not  unlike  the  mating  display 
among  animals — was  part  of  the  appropriate  be- 
havior during  courtship,  and  to  some  extent  was 
affected  by  young  men  as  well  as  maidens.  Grave 
attention  to  neckties,  the  fit  of  clothing,  and  the 
use  of  hair  and  shaving  cosmetics,  was  as  com- 
mon a  symptom  of  the  wooer  as  color,  grace,  and 
coquetry  were  of  the  wooed,  but  declined  even 
more  rapidly  when  the  wooing-game  gave  place 
to  the  marital  partnership. 

In  these  displays  the  young  were  encouraged  by 
their  parents,  partly  out  of  affectionate  pride,  but 
chiefly,  no  doubt,  as  a  way  of  calling  attention  to 
their  rising  standard  in  life.  For  in  this  freer 
country  it  was  the  mark  of  a  good  parent  to  give 
his  children  the  opportunity  and  the  means  of  at- 
taining a  higher  social  plane.  The  sons  of  sober, 
industrious  people  were  permitted  to  splurge  into 
smoking,  drinking,  horse-flesh,  and  sports;  the 
daughters  were  released  from  the  heavier  house- 
hold tasks  to  spend  their  time  in  contriving  flirta- 
tion, finery,  and  fancy-work.  Long  before  the 
destined  husband  appeared,  the  bride-to-be  was 
preparing  household  linen,  and  accumulating  the 
requisite  dozens  of  hand-made  undergarments 
trimmed  with  hundreds  of  yards  of  crochet, 
tatting,  and  embroidery.  In  all  this  elaboration 
there  was,  fortunately,  some  opportunity  for  the 
development  of  the  artistic  sense,  and  a  training 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         135 

in  thoroughness  of  detail,  which  later  found  ap- 
plication to  the  perfection  of  domestic  mat- 
ters. 

Mixed  up  with  the  conventional  theory  of  mar- 
riage as  the  suitable  outlet  for  woman's  ability, 
there  was  also  a  general  opinion  that  one  of  her 
secondary  functions  should  be  "  to  please,"  not 
only  all  marriageable  men,  but  society  at  large. 
This  involved  incessant  attention  to  appearances, 
to  manners,  and  to  lively  conversation.  Young 
women,  therefore,  spent  a  good  deal  of  their 
time  in  pleasing  and  piquing  each  other — prac- 
tising, so  to  speak,  the  art  by  which  their  future 
station  might  be  secured,  and  which  would  per- 
fect them  in  the  graces  expected  of  leisurely 
womenkind.  The  art  of  setting  off  the  person 
with  beautiful  clothes,  carefully  put  on  and  en- 
hanced with  grace  of  manner,  required  constant 
rehearsal,  and  this,  in  turn,  resulted  in  competi- 
tion among  women  to  see  who  could  attain  the 
highest  standard. 

Women  gradually  devised,  as  their  occupations 
came  to  be  less  and  less  directly  productive,  a 
round  of  social  functions  in  which  men  had  little 
or  no  part,  and  in  which  they  found  stimulation 
for  their  ultra-feminine  tastes  and  trivial  duties, 
to  take  up  the  time  which,  in  a  previous  genera- 
tion, would  have  been  employed  in  domestic  in- 
dustries. When  marriage  provided  them — ac- 


136         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

cording  to  the  theory — with  plenty  to  do,  it  was 
supposed  that  this  harmless  and  pretty  efflo- 
rescence of  the  young  female  would  cease.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  when  the  income  of  the  new  house- 
hold was  not  enough  to  afford  plenty  of  service, 
and  when  children  came  promptly,  it  did  stop 
abruptly.  The  worn-out  trousseau  was  replaced 
with  few  and  serviceable  garments;  the  delicate 
bridal  lingerie  was  often  laid  away  to  yellow  be- 
cause it  would  cost  too  much  labor  to  launder  it; 
and  the  young  mother,  struggling  with  duties  for 
which  she  had  almost  no  preparation,  was  content 
to  dress  her  babies  elaborately,  while  herself  re- 
lapsing prematurely  into  the  plainness  deemed 
suitable  to  motherhood  and  middle-age. 

But  when  a  girl  had  had  urged  upon  her  from 
babyhood  the  vital  importance  of  dress;  when  she 
had  spent  not  less  than  ten  years  of  her  life  in 
adornment  as  one  of  the  chief  aims  of  her  ex- 
istence, making  a  game  of  it,  and  enjoying  the 
zest  of  competition,  she  did  not  all  at  once  lose 
her  taste  for  pretty  clothes,  even  though  diverted 
by  motherhood.  If  her  husband  was  of  the  sort 
who  observed  such  matters,  and  wished  her  to 
please  the  public  as  well  as  himself  by  her  appear- 
ance, she  might  have  encouragement  to  continue 
after  marriage  the  arts  which  had  filled  up  her 
girlish  days.  Wherever  money  is  easily  made, 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         137 

as  it  was  in  the  Nineteenth-Century  America, 
men  are  generous  with  it;  but  in  such  a  pioneer 
society  men  had  not  the  leisure  to  cultivate  the 
habits  of  luxurious  expenditure,  and  they  left  to 
the  woman  the  function  of  "  vicarious  consump- 
tion." Her  costly  and  troublesome  clothes  were 
comparable,  according  to  Professor  Veblen,  to 
"  the  livery  of  the  chief  menial  of  the  household." 
In  default  of  men's  leisure  the  wife  became  the 
social  representative  of  the  family,  expressing  in 
her  person,  in  her  entertainments,  and  her  en- 
gagements, the  rising  social  status  and  the  degree 
of  her  husband's  financial  success. 

Beyond  this,  to  what  degree  the  lack  of  ab- 
sorbing duty  and  labor  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on 
the  other,  the  appetite  for  amusement,  have  con- 
tributed to  the  elaboration  of  dress  by  married 
women,  it  is  not  easy  to  say;  but  these  were  un- 
questionably some  of  the  reasons  for  prolonging 
the  excessive  absorption  of  young  girls  in  their 
appearance,  into  the  later  life  of  women.  The 
pursuit  of  the  fashions  afforded  satisfaction, 
moreover,  to  the  desire  for  variety  and  novelty; 
and  here  originality  and  taste  found  expression. 
Thus  a  variety  of  economic  and  social  motives 
added  to  the  initial  impulse  of  self-adornment  in 
women  a  force  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  nor- 
mal value.  Under  similar  circumstances,  and 
denied  so  apparently  harmless  a  diversion,  men 


138         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

were  accustomed  to  resort  to  sports  and  vice,  to 
gambling,  racing,  and  athletics. 

Aside  from  these  two  main  influences — increas- 
ing leisure  and  great  prosperity — another  of  even 
greater  force  was  set  in  motion  by  the  increase 
of  machine-made  goods  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  past  century.  Until  then,  rapidly  changing 
fashions  had  been  within  the  reach  of  only  a 
small  upper  class;  while  all  other  classes  in  so- 
ciety continued  to  wear  for  generations,  almost 
unaltered,  the  distinctive  dress  which  marked 
them  off  from  those  above  and  below  them.  In 
the  New  Democracy,  in  proportion  as  the 
boundaries  of  class  were  blurred  and  obliterated 
by  successful  men  passing  up  from  a  lower  to  a 
higher  stratum,  and  taking  their  womankind  with 
them,  the  fashion  of  clothing  became  more 
varied,  especially  among  the  younger  members 
of  the  family.  And  always  the  women  had  more 
time  than  men  to  give  to  these  insignia  of  af- 
fluence. 

So  long,  however,  as  materials  and  garment0, 
continued  to  be  hand-made,  the  fashions  re- 
mained, as  compared  with  our  day,  relatively 
stable.  Too  much  labor  and  time  was  consumed 
in  producing  garments  for  the  ordinary  person 
to  discard  them  before  they  were  worn  out.  The 
socks,  which  cost  the  housewife  days  of  labor  in 
the  knitting,  besides  the  expense  of  yarn,  had  to 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         139 

be  darned  and  patched  and  refooted;  while  in 
our  time  they  are  so  cheap  that  the  traveling  man 
and  the  prospector  might  almost  be  trailed  by 
the  unwashed  pairs  he  leaves  at  each  stopping- 
place.  The  element  of  irreplaceableness  in 
determining  use  and  value,  which  now  applies  to 
only  a  few  accessories  of  dress,  such  as  lace, 
jewels,  rare  shawls,  and  the  like,  once  applied  to 
nearly  all  good  clothes.  As  invention  brought 
about  the  rapid  and  comparatively  inexpensive 
production  of  dress  materials,  and  then  of  ready- 
made  clothing,  the  variety  of  stuffs  for  clothing 
increased,  and  the  incentive  for  women  to  vary 
their  clothing  was  immensely  augmented. 

The  manufacturer  and  the  merchant,  mean- 
while, set  out  to  sell  an  ever-increasing  product  by 
coaxing  the  consumer  to  throw  away  the  old  gar- 
ment long  before  it  was  worn  out,  and  to  buy 
new;  and,  as  if  this  were  not  inducement  enough, 
the  designer,  the  tailor,  and  the  dressmaker  added 
a  threat  in  the  shape  of  that  Bug-a-boo,  Being- 
out-of-Fashion.  Thus  Fashion,  once  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  highly  born  and  the  leisurely,  and 
associated  with  "  reputable  futility,"  became,  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  the  principal  means  of 
stimulating  trade.  Its  subtle  tyranny  has  spread 
far  beyond  the  original  limits  of  class  distinction 
and  occupation:  determining  the  width  of 
mourning-crape  and  the  designs  of  household 


140         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

furniture;  the  color  of  men's  hats  and  the  type  of 
auto-cars;  the  length  of  hair  and  the  brand  of 
whiskey;  the  size  of  trousers  and  the  markings  of 
thoroughbred  animals. 

Its  coercion,  now  primarily  commercial,  is  felt 
by  men  as  well  as  women,  though  not,  perhaps, 
to  the  same  extent.  To  be  out-of-style  marks  a 
man  as  being  unsophisticated  or  unsuccessful- 
characters  not  to  be  endured  except  by  the  day 
laborer,  the  artist,  and  the  scholar.  Nor  do  men, 
as  a  class,  rise  superior  to  this  social  convention; 
they  merely  restrict  their  changes  of  clothing  to 
a  narrower  range  of  more  practicable  garments, 
exercising  their  taste  by  proxy,  and  leave  to  their 
wives  or  a  haberdashery  expert  the  determination 
of  what  they  shall  wear.  The  standardization  of 
men's  clothing  has  reduced  them  to  a  certain  uni- 
formity of  appearance,  and  has  produced  a  class 
of  clerks  whose  business  it  is  to  act  as  arbiters  of 
fashion,  but  it  has  not  done  away  with  the  neces- 
sity of  keeping  up  with  the  styles.  One  has  only 
to  recall  the  punctilious  and  agonizing  care  with 
which  modest  gentlemen  of  infrequent  social  ex- 
cursions attend  to  every  detail  of  their  evening- 
dress,  to  realize  that  not  even  they  can  tolerate 
with  courage  the  possibility  of  seeming  queer  in 
the  eyes  of  their  friends. 

Even  less  can  any  man  endure  that  his  wife  or 
his  sister  should  appear  out-of-date,  a  dowdy  or 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         141 

an  esthetic  freak  in  dress.  When  monstrous 
hats  recently  came  into  fashion,  the  newspapers 
and  mankind  generally  belabored  women  with 
ridicule  in  order  to  remove  these  obscurations 
at  the  theater.  Yet  quite  as  powerful  as  the  con- 
servatism of  women  in  delaying  the  reform,  was 
the  reluctance  of  every  individual  man  to  let  his 
womankind  be  the  first  to  begin  it.  The  incon- 
sistencies produced  in  women  by  the  domination 
of  the  styles  are  well-matched  by  those  among 
men  of  crude  and  traditional  tastes,  who  inveigh 
against  the  extravagance  and  vagaries  of  the 
other  sex,  and  yet  no  less  openly  give  their  ad- 
miration to  the  most  "  stylish  "  women  of  their 
acquaintance.  Whatever  they  may  say,  most 
men  want  their  own  women-folk  to  be  dressed 
"  with  the  best,"  and  this  is,  in  itself,  aside  from 
the  stimulus  of  an  ever-changing  display,  the 
most  potent  influence  in  making  older  women  as 
well  as  young  girls  devote  an  inordinate  attention 
to  self-adornment. 

Nothing  more  aptly  illustrates  the  control 
which  men  exercise  over  the  type  of  women's 
clothing  than  the  rise  and  decline  of  the  various 
dress-reform  movements  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury. Of  these  the  best  known  and  one  of  the 
shortest-lived  was  the  street  dress  misnamed  the 
"  Bloomer  "  costume.  Designed  for  the  relief 
of  invalid  women  from  the  heavy  skirts  of  the 


142         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

Civil  War  period,  it  was  adopted  and  worn  in 
Washington  by  a  beautiful  and  cultivated  woman 
whose  prestige  led  to  other  women — most  of  them 
connected  with  the  Woman's  Rights  movement- 
adopting  it.  It  consisted  of  a  short  skirt  to  the 
boot-tops,  at  first,  with  Turkish  trousers,  after- 
wards buttoned  gaiters,  underneath.  It  must  be 
granted  that  it  was  a  sensible  and  modest,  if  not 
perfectly  graceful  costume.  Yet  the  violence  of 
men,  expressed  through  the  newspapers,  and  the 
vulgarities  of  street  mobs,  made  it  impossible 
for  women  of  the  most  irreproachable  reputations 
to  wear  the  costume,  as  the  following  quotation 
will  show: 


"  The  outcry  against  it  extended  from  one  end  of  the 
country  to  the  other;  the  Press  howled  in  derision,  the 
pulpit  hurled  its  anathemas,  and  the  rabble  took  up  the 
refrain.  On  the  streets  of  the  larger  cities  the  women 
were  followed  by  mobs  of  men  and  boys  .  .  .  throwing 
sticks  and  stones  and  giving  three  cheers  and  a  tiger  end- 
ing in  the  loudest  of  groans.  Sometimes  these  demonstra- 
tions became  so  violent  that  the  women  were  obliged  to 
seek  refuge  .  .  .  their  husbands  and  children  refused  to 
be  seen  with  them  in  public,  and  they  were  wholly  ostra- 
cized by  other  women. 

"  With  the  exception  of  Gerrit  Smith,  all  the  prom- 
inent men,  Garrison,  Phillips,  Channing,  May,  were 
bitterly  opposed  to  the  short  dress,  and  tried  to  dissuade 
the  women  from  wearing  it  by  every  argument  in  their 
power.  The  costume,  however,  was  adopted  as  a  matter 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         143 

of  principle,  and  for  it  they  suffered  a  martyrdom  which 
would  have  made  burning  at  the  stake  seem  comfortable. 
.  .  .  No  pen  can  describe  what  these  women  endured  for 
the  two  or  three  years  in  which  they  tried  to  establish  this 
principle,  through  such  sacrifice  as  only  a  woman  can  un- 
derstand." * 

When  the  bifurcated  costume  was  revived  in  a 
modified  form  toward  the  end  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century  by  the  vogue  of  the  bicycle,  it  was  joy- 
fully adopted  by  a  large  number  of  modest  but 
active  young  women;  and  it  shortly  went  out  of 
use,  chiefly  because  the  more  conservative  men 
did  not  want  their  feminine  companions  to  be  con- 
spicuous. This  illustrates  another  of  the  anom- 
alies of  dress:  A  woman  might  make  herself  very 
conspicuous — indeed,  was  encouraged  to  do  so — 
by  the  novel  and  bizarre  aspect  of  her  dress,  so 
long  as  it  followed  the  newest  mode  from  Paris, 
but  she  was  always  dubbed  "  strong-minded,"  or 
worse,  if  she  made  herself  conspicuous  by  merely 
being  rational. 

In  addition  to  economic  motives  and  the  neces- 
sity of  pleasing  men,  there  are  other  lesser  con- 
siderations leading  to  excessive  emphasis  on  per- 
sonal adornment.  Whether  girls  have  inher- 
ently more  artistic  impulse  than  boys,  may  be 
questioned;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  women  have 
a  more  cultivated  taste  in  clothing  and  furnishing 

•Harper,  Life  and  Work  of  S.  B.  Anthony,  Vol.  I,  p.  112. 


144         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

than  men.  It  is  a  difference  arising  largely  from 
education  and  incessant  attention  on  the  part  of 
women,  for  the  male  dressmaker,  the  male  artist, 
and  the  curio  dealer  often  have  as  refined,  if  not 
as  conventional,  a  sense  of  color  and  design  as  the 
woman  milliner  and  the  fine  lady.  Whatever 
artistic  impulse  girls  may  have  had  in  past  times, 
was  expressed  within  the  limits  of  dress,  house 
decoration,  and  gardening;  and  its  restriction 
within  these  narrow  fields  served  probably  to  in- 
tensify the  more  fundamental  motives,  leading 
them  to  constantly  elaborate  and  make  over  their 
clothes,  and  to  redecorate  and  refurnish  their 
houses. 

The  ornamentation  of  even  the  most  hideously 
furnished  houses  of  the  past  century  discloses  an 
astonishing  amount  of  crude  potential  art-sense  in 
the  housewife.  The  rag  carpet,  for  instance, 
cleverly  woven  from  the  bits  of  worn  cloth- 
ing, although  displaced  by  ugly  patterns  of  fac- 
tory-made floor  coverings,  has  now  come  back 
again  with  the  revival  of  art  handicrafts.  Fashion, 
which  now  encourages  originality  at  any  rate  in 
the  designers  and  purveyors  of  goods,  formerly 
perverted  and  suppressed  it.  If  the  ability  which 
our  grandmothers  expended  on  rag-rugs  and 
woven  bedspreads  had  been  turned  into  channels 
more  free  and  stimulating,  outside  as  well  as  in- 
side the  house,  the  artistic  capacity  and  impulse 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         145 

of  the  modern  woman  might  be  much  better  de- 
veloped than  it  is. 

Indirectly,  the  increase  in  variety  of  materials 
stimulated  both  men  and  women  to  desire  a 
greater  diversity  of  clothes.  Because  men's  gar- 
ments earlier  became  standarized,  the  multi- 
formity of  materials  and  modes  played  within  a 
narrower  range;  but  in  women's  dress  it  has,  as 
yet,  found  no  limit.  The  delicacy  and  manifold 
beauty  of  textiles;  the  infinite  number  of  patterns; 
and  the  constantly  changing  styles  have  stimulated 
the  desires  of  women  for  varied  clothing,  just  as 
the  ever-widening  range  of  foods  in  the  hotels  and 
restaurants  have  taught  men  to  demand  a  larger 
variety  of  more  elaborately  prepared  dishes  on 
their  home  tables.  Fragility  of  texture,  too,  has 
been  emphasized,  until  durability  has  become  an 
essential  only  of  the  most  expensive  articles.  That 
a  thing  should  be  showy  and  stylish  was  much 
more  desirable  than  that  it  should  be  lasting. 
When  fashions  in  the  accessories  of  dress,  such  as 
collars,  ties,  bags,  gloves,  handkerchiefs,  stock- 
ings, petty  jewelry,  combs,  et  cetera,  came  to  be 
changed  at  least  once  or  twice  a  year,  the  more 
quickly  they  grew  shabby,  the  sooner  the  con- 
sumer would  be  justified  in  buying  new  ones.  In 
the  case  of  women,  the  mere  habit  of  indoor  liv- 
ing, which  permitted  the  use  of  perishable  and 
delicate  clothing,  in  turn  reacted  to  make  them 


i46         THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS 

want  frequent  changes;  while  in  the  measure  that 
they  were  at  leisure  they  welcomed  dress  as  an 
occupation  affording  an  outlet  for  taste  and  a 
variety  of  interest  to  break  the  insipid  monotony 
of  their  lives. 

Briefly,  then,  the  pursuit  of  dress  as  a  serious 
matter  by  a  larger  number  of  women  than  ever 
before  in  the  history  of  the  world,  has  been  pri- 
marily due  to  a  number  of  political,  social,  and 
commercial  influences,  for  which  women  them- 
selves were  not  responsible.  It  was  one  of  the 
first  signs  that  the  "  ages  of  deficit "  were  ended, 
and  the  era  of  surplus  arrived.  It  was  one  of 
the  earliest  expressions  of  democratic  principles, 
and,  as  invention  and  manufacture  have  de- 
veloped, it  has  become  the  approved  means  of 
promoting  trade.  And  these  national  forces 
were  acting  throughout  the  Nineteenth  Century 
with  constantly  increasing  strength  upon  women. 
The  degree  of  female  receptiveness  depended 
upon  two  things:  the  amount  of  leisure,  and  the 
extent  to  which  they  had  imbibed  the  tradition 
that  a  lovely  appearance  was  the  quality  most  to 
be  desired  in  woman.  This  beauty-cult  is  now 
fast  becoming  secondary  among  well-educated 
women  to  the  cultivation  of  the  mind  and  the 
practice  of  gentle  manners.  Why,  then,  do  the 
majority  of  women  still  pursue  the  vagaries  of 
fashion  so  madly?  Because  the  average  woman 


THE  PURSUIT  OF  DRESS         147 

does  not  easily  outgrow  impressions  stamped  upon 
her  by  the  traditions  of  her  kind,  we  must  turn 
for  an  explanation  to  the  effect  of  the  pursuit  of 
dress  upon  her  personal  character. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

"  He  that  is  proud  of  the  russling  of  his  silks  like  a  madman 
laughs  at  the  rattling  of  his  fetters.  For,  indeed,  Clothes  ought 
to  be  our  remembrancers  of  our  lost  innocency." — THOMAS 
FULLER. 

"Thy  Clothes  are  all  the  Soul  thou  hast." — BEAUMONT  and 
FLETCHER. 

EVER  since  the  Civil  War  the  amount  of  time 
and  expense  put  upon  dress  by  women  in  this  coun- 
try has  been  increasing,  until  now  it  has  become 
the  chief  occupation  and  the  accepted  amusement 
of  a  very  large  number  of  those  above  the  labor- 
ing class.  It  has  been  generally  assumed  that  this 
is  due  to  some  inherent  personal  taste  on  the  part 
of  women;  but  it  is  a  matter  of  economic  history, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  that  dress  as  a  pursuit 
has  been  the  result  of  the  development  of  manu- 
facture and  of  modern  methods  of  trade  promo- 
tion rather  than  of  an  innate  frivolity,  to  which 
leisure  and  idleness  have  always  contributed. 

When  we  visualize  the  typical  jeweler,  deft- 
handed,  short-sighted,  and  stoop-shouldered;  or 
the  drygoods  clerk,  radiating  smiles  and  ladylike 

148 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      149 

manners;  or  the  politician,  swollen  with  self- 
confidence  and  over-eating;  we  do  not  assume  that 
he  could  never  have  been  any  other  sort  of  man, 
even  though  his  natural  temperament  may  have 
dictated  his  choice  of  occupation.  It  is  taken  for 
granted  in  explaining  such  men  that  their  ambi- 
tions in  life  have  been  molded  by  their  environ- 
ment to  produce  certain  types  of  physique  and 
character.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  experience 
that  there  are  very  few  human  beings  so  spe- 
cialized by  their  hereditary  qualities  that  they 
could  not  have  been  different  had  they  been  born 
in  another  environment  than  the  one  in  which  we 
see  them.  When  they  are  so  specialized  they  are 
called  eccentrics,  and  sometimes  recognized  as 
having  genius. 

One  has  only  to  observe  the  modifications  of 
character  and  habits  which  take  place  in  men  who 
change  from  one  industrial  medium  to  another,  re- 
quiring very  different  qualifications,  to  infer  that 
women  of  the  same  breed  might  show  unexpected 
variations  if  their  environment  were  as  varied  and 
as  stimulating.  The  effect  of  social  surroundings 
in  developing  in  women  an  inordinate  love  of 
adornment  can  be  best  measured,  perhaps,  by  con- 
templating other  and  rather  unusual  types  pro- 
duced by  exceptional  circumstances.  During  the 
past  century,  wherever  a  girl,  by  force  of  cir- 
cumstance or  natural  hatred  of  physical  restraint, 


150      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

refused  to  submit  to  the  tyranny  of  dress,  she  be- 
came almost  invariably  and,  it  might  almost  be 
said,  by  virtue  thereof,  a  superior  human  being. 
The  wives  of  the  California  pioneers,  brought  up 
like  other  Eastern  girls  to  give  the  utmost  care 
to  their  dress,  when  transplanted  to  isolated 
homes  on  ranches  and  in  mining  camps,  without 
servants,  and  often  compelled  to  do  the  labor  of  a 
large  household,  while  rearing  their  families,  al- 
most always  emancipated  their  bodies  from  the 
trammels  of  long  skirts  and  from  corsets.  Util- 
ity and  cleanliness  became  the  sole  requisites  of 
their  clothing,  and  thus  was  released  a  vast 
amount  of  physical  and  mental  energy  to  be  spent 
in  other  and  worthier  directions.  They  managed 
complicated  households,  reared  vigorous  children, 
in  emergencies  guarded  water-rights  and  mining 
properties  with  a  shotgun;  and  in  their  old  age 
were  as  fearless,  as  able-bodied,  as  warm-hearted, 
and  as  capable  as  their  partners. 

The  influence  of  the  Quaker  costume  and  plain 
traditions  in  minimizing  feminine  and  developing 
larger  human  qualities  in  women  is  registered  in 
the  Woman's  Rights  movement,  in  which  the 
Friends  played  so  large  a  part  between  1840  and 
1870.  Lucretia  Mott,  the  Quaker  preacher,  an 
exquisite,  gentle,  frail,  and  yet  brilliant  woman, 
was  doubtless  the  most  important  figure  among 
all  the  delegates  to  the  World's  Convention  in 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      151 

London.     Clothes  were  the  least  of  all  concerns 
to  her,  we  may  infer,  for  she  wrote  of  herself: 

"  My  life,  in  the  domestic  sphere,  has  passed  much  as 
that  of  other  wives  and  mothers  in  this  country.  I  have 
had  six  children.  Not  accustomed  to  resigning  them  to 
the  care  of  a  nurse,  I  was  much  confined  to  them  during 
their  infancy  and  childhood.  Being  fond  of  reading,  I 
omitted  much  unnecessary  stitching  and  ornamental  work 
in  the  sewing  for  my  family,  so  that  I  might  have  time 
for  this  indulgence  and  for  the  improvement  of  the  mind. 
For  novels  and  light  reading  I  never  had  much  taste. 
The  '  Ladies'  Department '  in  the  periodicals  of  the  day 
had  no  attraction  for  me." 

By  dwelling  on  such  exceptional  women,  it  may 
be  possible  to  conceive  what  the  effect  of  orna- 
mentation as  a  principal  aim  in  life  has  been  upon 
the  greater  number  of  average  young  girls 
brought  up  in  middle-class  homes.  To  them  dress 
involved  a  constant  consideration  of  money — 
how  to  get  it  without  directly  entering  the  wage- 
earning  class;  how  far  it  might  be  made  to  go, 
and  even  how  things  might  be  got  without  it. 
Money  has  rarely  been  looked  at  in  the  large  by 
women  as  income  or  capital,  but  rather  as  a  suc- 
cession of  petty,  irregular  sums  to  be  spread  over 
a  thousand  necessities  and  luxuries.  Because  the 
husband  and  father  was  the  earning  partner  he 
was  inevitably  the  financial  head,  paying  the  larger 
household  expenses  himself,  and  handing  out  to 


152      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

the  wife  and  minor  children  for  their  clothing  and 
incidentals  such  generous  or  niggardly  pin-money 
as  his  temperament  and  means  dictated.  The  ef- 
fect upon  women  was  similar  to  that  of  an  ir- 
regular wage  upon  the  casual  workingman;  there 
was  no  incentive  to  thrift,  but  every  inducement 
to  shortsighted  and  petty  extravagance.  There 
was  never  butter  to  cover  a  whole  slice  of  bread, 
therefore  why  trouble  about  butter  at  all? — why 
not  have  a  string  of  imitation  pearls? — so  women 
naturally  reasoned.  Expenditure  dribbled  along 
on  the  hand-to-mouth  principle :  a  girl  might  need 
hat,  shoes,  underwear,  all  at  once,  but,  as  the 
sum  given  her  at  any  one  time  was  never  enough 
to  cover  them  all,  she  naturally  bought  the  hat 
first,  the  shoes  next,  and  postponed  the  under- 
wear, making  the  best  appearance  she  could.  A 
constantly  rising  scale  of  dress  accessories  often 
cut  off — among  poorer  girls — garments,  and  even 
food,  necessary  to  health. 

Such  a  perversion  of  judgment  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  income  was,  and  is  still,  quite  character- 
istic of  the  average  woman.  I  have  known  a 
mother  of  a  family,  living  on  a  scale  of  several 
thousand  a  year,  in  a  pretty  house,  among  cul- 
tivated people,  who  set  a  meager  luncheon  (when 
her  husband  was  absent),  and  never  had  blankets 
enough  for  all  the  beds,  who,  nevertheless,  "  had 
to  have  "  solid  silver  and  cut  glass  on  her  table, 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      153 

and  decollete  dinner  dresses,  in  order  to  feel 
happy  and  respectable.  There  are  many  others 
of  the  same  type,  who  find  money  to  buy  pretty 
clothes  and  artistic  house  furnishings,  but  never  to 
pay  adequately  for  house-services.  A  woman 
who  lived  on  a  scale  twice  that  of  a  college  pro- 
fessor, who  was  always  beautifully  gowned  and 
bejeweled,  seriously  asked  that  a  university  should 
give  her  son  a  scholarship  because  the  standard 
of  living  expected  of  people  in  their  social  posi- 
tion did  not  permit  them  to  send  their  son  through 
college,  nor  admit  of  his  working  his  own  way. 
A  lecturer  on  dress  reform,  who  urged  that  one 
conservative  tailor-made  suit,  with  the  necessary 
accessories,  bought  carefully  each  year,  was  the 
most  economical  way  of  being  well  dressed,  was 
continually  met  by  the  objection  that  her  hearers 
could  not  save  up  enough  ahead  to  get  what  they 
needed  all  at  once. 

Even  when  the  woman  had  a  regular  allowance 
her  sense  of  proportion  was  seldom  developed 
to  the  point  of  providing  the  necessities  first,  and 
choosing  among  a  thousand  luxuries  afterwards. 
Yet  that  such  lack  of  judgment  is  due  rather  to 
lack  of  education  in  personal  finance  than  to  sex 
may  be  illustrated  by  the  idiosyncrasies  of  college 
boys  in  the  same  matters.  The  college  boy 
usually  pays  his  board  bill,  because  he  must  eat, 
and  he  buys  such  books  as  he  cannot  borrow;  but 


154      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

he  lets  the  laundryman  and  the  tailor  wait,  some- 
times indefinitely,  wears  a  sweater  and  corduroys 
not  merely  because  he  is  lazy  and  they  are  a  sort 
of  collegiate  livery,  but  to  economize.  He  thinks 
himself  justifiably  "  cute "  when  he  arrives  at 
home  in  vacation  so  shabby  that  his  foolish  par- 
ents insist  on  presenting  him  with  new  clothes 
without  reflecting  that  he  spent  in  unreported  ex- 
travagances what  should  have  clothed  him 
properly. 

It  is  evident  enough  without  further  illustra- 
tion that,  because  women  did  not  earn  their 
money,  and  received  it  irregularly  in  small 
amounts,  they  had  no  occasion  to  develop  a  bal- 
anced financial  sense;  but  acquired,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  wonderful  skill  in  spreading  petty 
amounts  thinly  over  large  areas,  and,  on  the 
other,  a  perverted  judgment  of  values.  If  this 
had  produced  in  them  only  a  petty  thrift  and  fool- 
ish expenditure,  the  remedy  would  be  obvious  and 
easy;  but  it  has,  in  truth,  eaten  into  character 
much  more  deeply.  For  the  love  of  dress  and  the 
necessity  of  satisfying  it  by  getting  it  from  some 
man  who  earned  it,  made  girls  from  their  child- 
hood contrive,  deceive,  and  manoeuver.  It  is  a 
common  enough  joke  that  men  are  better- 
humored  after  dinner  than  before,  but  among 
women  it  is  a  commonplace  quite  without  any 
humorous  color.  Every  dependent  creature, 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      155 

whether  woman  or  child,  peon  or  dog,  as  a  matter 
of  safety  or  comfort,  learns  to  read  the  temper 
of  his  master;  and  in  proportion  as  he  is  able  to 
play  upon  it,  finds  life  easier.  Wheedling  and 
cunning,  the  whole  battery  of  feminine  weapons 
from  caresses  to  tears  and  temper,  were  in- 
evitably employed  upon  negligent  and  selfish  men 
by  their  dependents;  and  often  to  the  extent  of 
imposition  upon  generous  men. 

Sometimes,  when  there  was  no  man  to  supply 
an  income,  or  the  man  was  too  unremunerative, 
the  woman  resorted  to  other  means  of  eking 
out  her  purse  without  appearing  to  work  for  a 
living.  The  business  of  the  Woman's  Exchange 
was  originally  devised  to  give  the  untrained  gen- 
tlewoman a  chance  to  market  her  products  with- 
out being  known.  Many  a  woman,  who,  in  our 
day,  would  go  into  a  shop  or  become  a  typist, 
tried  to  keep  herself  within  the  pale  of  her  social 
class  by  selling,  surreptitiously,  embroideries  and 
pastry.  While  even  yet  the  society  girl,  whose 
standard  of  dress  must  be  kept  up  as  a  matter 
of  convention,  receives  the  second-hand  dealer 
quietly  at  her  home,  and  turns  her  slightly  worn 
evening  dresses  into  money,  which  may  be  spent 
for  those  of  the  latest  mode. 

If  the  initial  expense  in  time,  money,  and 
thought  required  in  stylish  dressing  had  been  all 
that  the  pursuit  demanded,  as  it  has  been  gener- 


156      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

ally  among  men,  it  might  be  worth  the  price,  for 
good  appearance  has  everywhere  a  recognized 
value  in  the  world.  But  it  did  not  end  there,  as 
in  the  case  of  a  man  who  might  purchase  a  whole 
outfit  and  its  accessories  at  one  or  two  stores, 
and,  after  a  few  days,  put  it  on  with  the  assur- 
ance that  for  six  months  at  least  he  was  properly 
clothed.  In  our  country  the  ready-made  clothing 
industries  have  greatly  diminished  the  amount  of 
time  and  attention  necessary  to  procure  the  es- 
sentials, even  of  women's  clothing,  but  this  is  of 
quite  recent  date,  and  has  not  by  any  means  done 
away  with  the  minute  attention  which  has  to  be 
bestowed  on  every  detail  if  a  woman  wishes  to 
attain  the  recognized  standard. 

The  stylish  woman  had  forever  to  pursue  that 
will-o'-the-wisp  of  fashion,  "  the  newest  thing," 
not  only  in  boots,  stockings,  lingerie,  dresses,  and 
hats,  but  also  the  latest-uttermost-refinement-of- 
the-newest-thing  in  braids,  lace,  embroidery, 
beads,  passementerie,  trimmings,  of  which  there 
were  hundreds  of  designs  rapidly  succeeding  each 
other.  There  were,  besides,  an  infinitude  of 
shades,  widths,  textile  surfaces  in  an  ever-enlarg- 
ing variety  of  stuffs;  and  these  had  to  be  com- 
bined by  herself  or  the  dressmaker,  after  consulta- 
tion of  several  American  and  French  fashion 
books,  in  the  momentarily  approved  design.  And 
all  this  energy  was  expended  without  hope  of  any- 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      157 

thing  more  than  temporary  success,  except  for 
those  who  could  make  over  or  replace  the  gar- 
ment to  meet  the  next  incoming  fashion. 

The  making-over  of  clothes  every  year,  if  not 
every  six  months,  as  the  pace  of  fashion  speeded 
up,  came  to  take  the  place  of  many  of  those 
spurious  handicrafts  with  which  the  clever  woman 
of  the  mid-century  had  been  wont  to  busy  her 
hands.  It  became  a  matter  of  pride  with  those 
of  small  means  to  "  make  something  out  of 
nothing,"  as  the  complimentary  phrase  went — 
to  contrive  a  new  and  stylish  dress  out  of  two  old 
ones;  to  conceal  paucity  of  material  by  piecing 
small  bits  of  cloth  together,  and  decorating  the 
tell-tale  seams;  to  make  a  jacket  of  a  man's  dis- 
carded overcoat,  lined  with  the  less-worn  portions 
of  an  old  silk  petticoat.  As  the  rule  of  Fashion 
spread  to  carpets,  curtains,  bedding,  and  furni- 
ture, the  inexorable  principle  of  multiplying  de- 
signs to  stimulate  buying,  invaded  this  field  as 
well;  and  the  devoted  housewife,  according  to  her 
means  and  her  ingenuity,  conscientiously  set  her- 
self the  duty  of  keeping  her  house  as  well  as  her- 
self and  children  "  in  the  Fashion."  In  all  this 
she  exercised  her  brain  as  much  as  her  manufac- 
turing grandmother  had  done  before  her,  but  with 
infinitely  less  of  real  value  to  show  for  it. 

Perhaps  all  the  more  because  the  result  did  not 
command  satisfactory  appreciation  from  her  men- 


158      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

folk,  whose  crude  tastes  and  practical  turn  of 
mind  did  not  readily  grasp  the  desperate  need  of 
women  to  be  in  the  fashion,  she  required  the  ap- 
proval of  other  womankind.  So  much  struggle 
and  economy  must  be  worthy  of  recognition;  and 
if,  unhappily,  her  men  friends  did  not  notice  and 
praise  the  triumphs  of  her  ingenious — and  often 
wasted — skill,  she  turned  to  other  women  to  se- 
cure their  proper  appraisal.  It  is  no  doubt  true 
that  women  competing  in  the  dress  contest  are 
often  jealous  of  each  other,  but  it  is  far  more  sig- 
nificant that  they  have  devised  a  code  of  manners 
with  which  to  satisfy  each  other's  hunger  for  ap- 
preciation. Each  agrees  to  admire,  or,  at  any 
rate,  to  appear  to  admire,  the  other's  dress. 
When  two  women  meet,  it  is  customary,  after  the 
conventional  greeting,  for  one  to  say:  "How 
pretty  your  new  hat  is !  "  And  for  the  other  to 
reply:  "  I'm  so  glad  you  like  it — I  saw  the  new 
shape  at  Smith's  Emporium,  and  I  trimmed  it 
with  the  velvet  off  my  last  winter's  hat."  When 
this  topic  has  been  canvassed  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  wearer  of  the  hat,  she  in  turn  will  compli- 
ment her  friend's  taste  and  ingenuity  by  praising 
something  she  is  wearing.  In  such  wise  have 
women  expended  their  perverted  abilities  and 
kindliness,  spurred  on  by  the  race  of  commercial 
fashion,  and  lacking  an  education  in  larger 
things. 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      159 

Dress,  moreover,  came  to  take  the  place  of 
healthful  exercise  and  recreation.  The  lazy 
afternoon  parade  through  the  shopping  streets, 
to  see  the  newest  fashions  displayed  four  times  a 
year  at  the  change  of  seasons,  became  a  weekly 
excursion  as  the  varieties  of  materials  and  style 
increased.  And  in  our  day  many  women  of  small 
means  know  scarcely  any  other  way  of  spending 
their  leisure  except  to  drag  a  fretful  child  past 
the  shop  windows  every  weekday  afternoon;  and 
then  to  go  home  and  try  to  copy  the  most  violent 
combinations  of  color  and  the  most  striking  de- 
signs in  slazy,  cheap  imitations. 

It  is  a  trite  old  saying  that  a  man  with  a  cham- 
pagne taste  and  a  beer  income  is  sure  of  trouble. 
In  women  a  similar  desire  for  display,  gratified  at 
the  cost  of  the  earning  power  of  which  they  them- 
selves have  no  direct  experience,  is  equally  dis- 
astrous in  producing  effeminacy  and  discontent. 
The  capacity  for  detail  developed  through  a  thou- 
sand generations  of  domestic  necessity  has  been 
turned  into  a  few  narrow  channels,  the  chief  of 
which  has  at  last  come  to  be  the  pursuit  of  dress. 
Their  age-long  economy  has  become  shortsighted 
pinching  in  some,  and  equally  ill-judged  extrava- 
gance in  others.  And  the  constant  chase  after 
fashions  which  no  amount  of  money  would  en- 
able them  to  really  come  up  with  has  produced  a 
state  of  chronic  dissatisfaction  with  themselves, 


160      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

their  lot,  and  with  the  men  who  supply  their  in- 
come. Petty-mindedness  has  at  last  become  the 
distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  average 
woman.  The  marvelous  thrift  which  enables  her 
to  dress  stylishly  on  a  small  sum;  the  originality 
with  which  she  contrives  and  imitates  ever-new 
prettinesses ;  the  ingenuity  with  which  she  makes  a 
good  show  on  small  resources — all  these  valuable 
but  perverted  qualities  would,  if  applied  to  the 
larger  problems  of  common  life,  clean  up  the 
cities,  find  a  home  for  every  normal  child,  and 
reform  our  haphazard  domestic  economy;  and 
would  produce  that  sureness  of  aim,  that  sense  of 
being  a  useful  cog  in  the  world's  machinery,  with- 
out which  no  human  being  can  be  happy. 

One  has  only  to  listen  to  the  conversation  of 
women  among  themselves  to  realize  that  clothes 
are  sure  to  come  to  the  top.  From  the  latest 
sensation  in  the  newspapers  or  the  last  play,  the 
talk  drifts  quickly  around  to  the  newest  departure 
in  fashions  proposed  by  the  Ladies'  Scrap-Bag, 
the  pretty  knitted  capes  for  babies  depicted  in  the 
last  number  of  the  Perambulator,  or  the  wonder- 
ful bargains  in  petticoats  to  be  had  at  Rosen- 
berg's. They  skip  from  topic  to  topic  without 
apparent  logic,  each  new  subject  being  suggested 
by  the  speaker's  latest  interest  in  dress.  Since  the 
experience  of  the  domestic  woman  was  necessarily 
limited  to  a  certain  round  of  topics — clothes, 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      161 

cooking,  servants,  and  children — her  conversation 
had  rarely  any  continuity,  because  her  life  had 
none.  It  consisted  rather  of  hopping  from  one 
unrelated  fact  to  another  without  that  impulse  of 
a  ball  lightly  tossed  back  and  forth  by  which  an 
intelligent  conversation  is  developed.  When  op- 
portunity offered,  her  talk  degenerated  into  that 
bog  of  narrowness  and  ill-breeding,  a  monologue 
of  her  personal  grievances. 

The  female  mind,  thus  fed  on  details  of 
ephemeral  importance,  had  no  reason  for  larger 
intellectual  interests;  and  constant  occupation 
with  the  attainment  of  the  correct  accessories  of 
her  costume  left  little  leisure  for  reading.  Such 
books  as  she  found  time  for  would  naturally  be 
of  the  emasculated  sort,  whose  heroines  were 
the  beautiful  and  perfectly  dressed  kind  she  strove 
to  be;  to  whom  impossible,  but  perfectly  moral, 
adventures  happened,  until  they  culminated  in  a 
blissful  engagement.  For  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury at  least,  the  Sunday-school  novel  and  maga- 
zines of  the  type  of  Godey's  Lady's  Book  sup- 
plied the  mental  pabulum  of  the  majority  of 
American  women.  The  magazines  inculcated 
the  pursuit  of  dress  as  a  most  important  duty  of 
woman,  as  part  of  the  ideal  of  gentility  and  re- 
ligion set  before  the  perfect  lady. 

And  if  it  be  thought  that  women  no  longer  feed 
on  this  anemic  literary  diet,  one  has  only  to  ex- 


1 62      CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

amine  any  one  of  the  strictly  feminine  journals  to 
learn  how  pervasive  it  still  is.  Many  of  them 
profit  by,  if  they  are  not  published  in,  the  interest 
of  trade  and  manufactures  for  women,  and  it  is 
highly  important  to  them  that  the  love  of  dress 
should  be  intensified.  From  one  of  them,  which 
may  be  matched  by  many  others  published  in 
1910,  I  quote  the  following  passage: 

"  Indeed,  all  women  in  this  enlightened  age  study  the 
subject  of  dress  in  a  way  so  thorough  that  it  would  have 
been  considered  irreligious  a  century  ago.  Now,  it  is  as 
well  understood  and  accepted  as  any  other  duty,  for  being 
well-dressed,  which  means  suitably  dressed,  imparts  the 
serenity  and  poise  which  make  for  happiness;  and  the 
woman  who  is  happy  and  well-poised  makes  everybody 
around  her  better  and  more  serene." 

This  harping  on  the  "  duty  "  of  being  well- 
dressed,  which  is,  in  plain  English,  an  invitation 
to  throw  away  the  old  and  buy  new,  whether  the 
woman  can  afford  it  or  not,  is  the  stock  in  trade 
of  the  Fashion  writers: 

"  Since  hats  first  came  into  fashion  woman  has  found 
them  an  inexhaustible  source  of  interest.  The  quest  for 
becomingness  is  always  fascinating,  and  though  we  do 
not  always  find  it,  it  is  every  woman's  duty  to  make  the 
most  of  herself.  .  .  . 

"  It  has  become  wellnigh  impossible  to  create  anything 
sensational  in  the  way  of  a  hat.  Extreme  size  and  over- 
abundance of  trimming  have  ceased  to  surprise." 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      163 

In  the  same  magazine  I  find  another  appeal  to 
the  feminine  conscience : 


"  There  never  was  a  time  when  Dame  Fashion's  hair- 
dresser made  it  so  possible  for  every  woman  to  look  her 
best  as  now.  No  matter  what  her  features,  she  can  make 
them  appear  to  the  best  advantage  by  adopting  the  most 
becoming  style  of  hair-dressing.  ...  It  is  a  common  fault 
of  women  that  they  fail  to  realize  the  importance  of 
making  the  most  of  their  crowning  glory — the  hair." 

In  an  article  on  the  mistakes  of  women  in 
dressing,  the  matter  is  put  on  a  higher  plane: 

"  The  study  of  clothes  is  considered  to  be  a  good  deal 
of  a  frivolous  subject,  unworthy  of  thought  or  considera- 
tion by  serious  people ;  and  yet  to  attain  the  good  taste 
which  results  thereby,  and  which  means  true  simplicity 
and  good  art  in  clothes,  requires  the  same  effort  and 
thought  which  are  necessary  to  reach  a  high  standard  in 
any  other  art  worthy  of  the  name." 

The  elderly  woman  is  then  encouraged  not  to 
let  herself  be  left  behind  by  the  statement  that 
"  fashion  no  longer  relegates  the  woman  past  the 
youthful  years  to  circumscribed  styles  ...  as 
worn  but  a  short  time  ago;"  and  the  crafty  ex- 
pert in  female  psychology  then  gives  a  page  of 
charming  heads  of  middle-aged  women  with 
lovely  complexions,  regular  features,  and  not  a 
wrinkle,  encased  in  the  smartest  of  hats — not  in 


1 64     CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

bonnets.  The  plain  elderly  woman  is  still  further 
tolled  along  by  such  phrases  as  "  these  have  more 
dignity,"  or  "  have  an  indefinable  sense  of  fit- 
ness," until,  by  the  time  the  sheet  is  finished,  a 
thousand  women  are  convinced  not  only  that  they 
must  have  a  new  hat,  but  that  this  particular  new 
style  will  make  them  young  and  beautiful. 

In  order  to  focus  the  feminine  mind  on  the 
spring  fashions — and  incidentally  to  sell  their 
wares — another  journal  has  a  clever  article  on 
the  Paris  dressmakers,  in  which  we  are  led  to  see 
the  poetry  of  design,  in  this  wise : 

"  For  there  is  something  in  the  atmosphere  of  Paris 
.  .  .  that  seems  to  create  a  desire  for  lovely  things  and 
to  furnish  dressmakers  with  an  incentive  and  an  inspira- 
tion for  their  work.  .  .  .  Perhaps  it  is  because  Paris  has 
always  been  a  sort  of  playground  for  rich  men  and  lovely 
women,  exquisites  with  whom  pleasure  is  a  life  study, 
dress  a  fine  art,  beauty  a  religion. 

"  If  the  dressmakers  do  not  create  their  styles  out  of 
thin  air  they  at  least  have  a  wizardry  of  touch  that  makes 
the  dross  of  the  commonplace  turn  into  pure  gold  in  their 
hands.  .  .  .  Manufacture  is  rather  a  sordid  term,  per- 
haps, to  apply  to  the  turning  out  of  masterpieces  that 
will  surprise  and  delight  the  expectant  public  at  the  com- 
ing openings." 

After  a  resume  of  the  dominating  character- 
istics of  the  styles,  this  subtle  promoter  of  novelty 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      165 

soothes  us  into  the  delusion  that,  after  all,  we  are 
not  compelled  to  adopt  any  one  of  the  new  ideas: 

"  Further  than  that  no  one,  not  even  the  dressmakers 
themselves,  can  say  what  will  be  worn,  for  the  decision 
on  a  new  style  or  a  change  in  an  old  style  rests  with  the 
public.  Ultimately  by  continually  harping  on  one  string 
the  dressmakers  may  lure  the  populace  into  dancing  the 
tune  they  pipe,  but  they  cannot  force  it.  They  can  only 
lead  and  suggest,  and  make  their  suggestions  so  attractive 
that  the  public,  like  a  spoiled  child,  drops  its  old  toy  and 
reaches  out  its  hand  to  grasp  the  new." 

Since  the  days  of  the  forties,  when  French 
fashion-plates  were  successfully  introduced,  this 
sort  of  literature  has  been  served  up  to  make 
women  buy  new,  and  always  more  fantastic,  cloth- 
ing. It  requires  no  great  acumen  to  conclude  that 
it  would  inevitably  lead  to  extravagance.  Having 
no  responsibility  for  earning  their  own  money — 
though  indirectly  they  might,  nevertheless,  earn 
it — and  very  little  experience  in  handling  it,  ex- 
cept in  small  amounts,  they  did  not  reckon  its 
value  in  the  large.  And  having  been  encouraged 
to  concentrate  their  energies  on  appearance,  they 
came  to  have  a  highly  cultivated  taste — nay,  more 
than  taste,  appetite — for  pretty  clothes  which,  like 
an  appetite  for  drink  or  games  of  chance,  must 
be  satisfied.  Yet  it,  like  many  another  social 
habit,  could  never  be  satisfied.  It  might  also  be 


1 66     CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

said  that  the  more  time  and  money  they  had  to 
give  to  dress,  the  more  discontented  they  were 
sure  to  be.  If  the  father  or  husband  could  not 
meet  this  rising  demand,  they  pitied  themselves 
for  his  lack  of  success;  if  he  set  a  limit  of  ex- 
penditure, they  regarded  him  as  a  selfish  brute. 
Now  and  then  they  degenerated  into  dishonest 
schemers,  running  up  large  bills  for  which  their 
menkind  were  responsible;  cheating  the  dress- 
maker and  the  milliner;  sending  back  garments  as 
unsatisfactory  after  wearing  them;  practising  the 
deceits  of  the  adventuress  in  the  guise  of  a  re- 
spectable woman  of  society. 

Yet,  in  justice  to  womankind,  it  must  be  granted 
that  the  dress-mania  produced  very  few  of  these 
types,  as  compared  with  hundreds  of  conscien- 
tious, economical  women,  who,  misled  by  the  con- 
ventions of  their  social  station,  took  out  of  them- 
selves, rather  than  out  of  men's  pockets,  the 
wherewithal  to  achieve  the  proper  clothes  of  a 
lady.  These  dear,  fussy,  dutiful  creatures  sacri- 
ficed their  health,  their  love  of  nature,  their  taste 
for  art,  for  literature,  even  their  companionable- 
ness,  to  the  Juggernaut  of  women — Suitability. 
Moreover,  because  men  were  conspicuously  the 
producing  class,  and  women  for  the  most  part  ob- 
viously the  consumers,  extravagance  came  to  be 
regarded  as  a  female  propensity;  while,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  it  was  no  more  truly  characteristic  of 


CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER      167 

one  than  of  the  other.  What  men  spent  in  cigars 
and  tobacco,  in  heavy  eating  and  drinking,  in 
club  life  and  dues,  and  in  careless,  unconsidered 
sums,  women  balanced  by  their  equally  wasteful 
but  careful  spreading  of  small  sums  upon  the 
elaboration  of  dress. 

One  of  the  last  and  most  demoralizing  aspects 
of  fashion-promotion  has  been  the  infliction  upon 
children  of  the  over-developed  taste  for  tawdry 
ornament.  The  women's  magazines  cater  to  the 
mother's  pride  by  providing  embroidery  patterns 
to  be  worked  upon  little  boys'  blouses;  suggestions 
of  how  to  cut  over  little  girls'  dresses  to  keep  pace 
with  the  newest  idea.  While  the  laundry  bills 
mount  ever  higher,  the  fashionable  little  girl  is 
rigged  out  in  more  fragile  and  impracticable  and 
unwholesome  clothing.  It  is  as  if  the  mother 
were  still  a  child  herself,  playing  with  a  live  doll 
which,  though  it  cannot  be  broken,  may  still  be 
distorted  into  her  own  foolish  image. 

As  a  result  of  the  combined  influence  of  eco- 
nomic forces  and  social  traditions,  centering  in 
dress,  women  have  acquired  a  set  of  habits  of  ex- 
penditure and  thinking  which  lead  to  discontent 
and  waste  of  time  in  the  trivialities  of  taste,  in  the 
pursuit  of  petty  economies,  and  in  the  discussion 
of  dress  detail.  These  are,  however,  the  least  of 
the  evil  effects  of  the  dress-cult:  in  many  women 
they  degenerate  into  exploitation  of  men,  dishon- 


1 68     CLOTHES  AND  CHARACTER 

esty  toward  tradespeople,  and  the  vulgarities  of 
conspicuous  display.  It  may  almost  be  asserted 
that  competence,  good  humor,  and  intelligence  in 
women  are  now  in  inverse  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  time  they  spend  on  the  fashion  of 
their  clothes.  A  woman  of  influence  and  a  "  real 
lady  "  in  the  Twentieth  Century  is  known,  more 
often  than  not,  by  the  fact  that  she  is  not  dressed 
conspicuously  in  the  latest  fashion.  She  may  be 
known  even  more  by  the  fact  that  her  children  are 
dressed  in  the  simplest  and  most  child-like 
manner. 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

"  The  virtues  of  the  man  and  woman  are  the  same." — 
ANTISTHENES. 

"  I  am  ignorant  of  any  one  quality  that  is  admirable  in  woman 
which  is  not  equally  so  in  man.  I  do  not  except  even  modesty 
and  gentleness  of  nature;  nor  do  I  know  one  vice  or  folly 
which  is  not  equally  detestable  in  both." — DEAN  SWIFT. 

"  Virtue  consists  not  in  refusal,  but  in  selection." — LESTER  F. 
WARD. 

THE  old-fashioned  word,  virtue,  is  now 
familiar  to  us  chiefly  in  certain  phrases  from  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures.  The  translators  of  King 
James  used  it  in  the  original  Latin  sense  as  de- 
noting the  qualities  of  a  man — strength,  courage, 
capacity — as  may  be  seen  in  the  tenth  chapter  of 
Proverbs,  where  Solomon  is  describing  the  ideal 
mistress  of  a  household.  She  whose  price  was 
"  above  rubies "  appears  to  have  been  valued 
most  for  incessant  and  varied  industry,  and  for 
her  administrative  ability;  at  any  rate,  nothing  is 
there  said  about  her  personal  appearance,  nor 
her  bodily  habits.  Words,  even  Biblical  words, 
however,  have  a  way  of  changing  color  accord- 

169 


1 70     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

ing  to  the  lights  of  those  who  use  them.  In  the 
mouths  of  the  Puritans  of  the  past  century  the 
vigorous  word  virtue  had  all  but  lost  its  strong 
tint  of  manliness.  It  had  come  to  signify,  rather, 
the  qualities  of  the  chaste  and  docile  female,  who 
was  the  ideal  Christian  housewife  in  that  society; 
and  these  qualities  were  carefully  inculcated  by  a 
process  of  domestication. 

In  their  development  under  domestication 
there  is  an  interesting  analogy  between  human- 
kind and  animals.  The  bull  is  still  a  thick- 
necked,  violent,  undisciplined  creature,  of  slight 
use,  except  to  propagate  his  kind;  while  his  mate, 
the  cow — which  is  not  merely  maternal,  but  also 
specialized  along  an  important  line  of  production 
—has  developed  the  qualities  of  domestication  to 
a  high  degree.  She  bears  her  young  and  gives  up 
her  milk  meekly  at  the  will  of  a  master,  losing 
the  characteristics  of  the  wild  bovine  under  the 
discipline  of  unremitting  fertility.  In  the  United 
States,  the  male  horse,  unless  deprived  of  the 
organs  of  sex,  is  isolated  almost  like  a  wild  beast; 
in  French  cities  he  is  made  useful  as  a  draft  ani- 
mal only  by  excluding  mares  entirely  from  the 
environs,  and  consigning  them  to  the  rural 
districts.  Thus,  in  modern  life,  the  sexual 
qualities  of  male  animals  often  make  them  nui- 
sances. 

The  point  of  significance  of  all  this  in  the  pres- 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      171 

ent  discussion  is,  that  the  female  domestic  animal 
and  the  unsexed  steer  and  gelding  have  been  com- 
pelled, under  the  hand  of  man,  to  suppress  the 
more  aggressive  traits  native  to  them,  and  to  put 
on  the  milder  qualities  of  domestication.  In 
much  the  same  way  the  human  female,  under  the 
double  discipline  of  maternity  and  hard  work, 
originally  acquired  the  passive  qualities  of  endur- 
ance, at  the  same  time  suppressing  the  ruder  and 
more  pugnacious  virtues.  This  change  took 
place,  it  may  be  supposed,  just  in  proportion  as 
her  relation  to  the  economic  and  political  ar- 
rangements of  society  became  indirect.  As  soon 
as  wives  and  daughters  ceased  to  be  direct  pro- 
ducers and  accepted  support  and  protection  for 
as  much  or  as  little  personal  service  as  they 
chose  to  give,  they  put  on,  of  necessity,  the 
qualities  which  their  supporters  demanded  or 
admired. 

Mastery — or  control,  as  we  politely  call  it  now 
—was  the  natural  ambition  of  men  not  fully  civ- 
ilized; but,  in  a  brutal,  competitive  world,  they 
found  it  difficult  to  achieve  over  other  men  and 
contrary  circumstances.  All  the  more,  therefore, 
they  desired  mastery  in  their  households — it  was 
easier  to  begin  at  home.  The  head  of  a  family 
who  spent  his  days  even  in  mere  commercial  con- 
test with  other  men,  would  naturally  expect  sub- 
servience in  his  wife  and  children,  just  as  he  did 


172     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

in  his  employes;  nor  would  he  be  likely  to  toler- 
ate in  them  original  opinions  and  independent 
action. 

Womenkind  have  generally  had  to  please  the 
Head  of  the  Family  if  they  wished  to  be  com- 
fortable and  happy.  Herbert  Spencer  remarks 
that  the  gentler  type  of  women  survived  among 
primitive  peoples,  because  they  had  to  practise 
obedience  or  be  knocked  on  the  head;  and  that 
the  sympathetic  female  was  at  a  premium,  because 
she  could  adjust  herself  to  the  moods  of  her  lord. 
It  is  certain  that  even  in  quite  modern  times  men 
have  unconsciously  preferred  girls  whose  inex- 
perience and  apparent  docility  gave  promise  that 
at  home,  at  least,  the  man's  will  would  prevail. 
It  not  infrequently  happened  that  the  lover  was 
deceived  by  the  yielding  temper  of  his  betrothed, 
which,  like  the  mating  plumage  of  the  male  bird, 
had  been  assumed  instinctively  merely  for  the 
season. 

The  virtues  of  subordination  in  women,  as  in 
the  laboring  classes,  are  even  yet  found  in  toler- 
ably exact  measure  as  these  classes  are  industri- 
ally dependent.  Our  grandmothers  of  the 
early  Nineteenth  Century  were  first-hand  pro- 
ducers and,  inevitably,  partners  with  their  hus- 
bands. Within  the  sphere  of  domesticity  at  least, 
they  ruled  with  a  degree  of  independence.  The 
social  history  of  their  time  dwells  upon  their 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      173 

courage  and  prudence,  their  loyalty  and  industry, 
but  scarcely  mentions  docility  and  obedience,  al- 
though these  were  required  of  them  by  the  code 
of  society  and  religion.  But  by  the  middle  of  the 
century  the  emphasis  upon  the  qualities  desirable 
in  women  had  perceptibly  shifted  from  the  posi- 
tive virtues  of  relative  independence  to  the  more 
negative  qualities  of  subservience. 

The  discipline  of  dependence  and  maternity 
was  further  reinforced  by  the  approving  emphasis 
of  society  upon  those  qualities  which  men  pre- 
ferred in  their  subordinates.  Women  were 
taught  by  the  clergy  that  u  the  men  of  the  na- 
tion are  what  their  mothers  make  them,"  and  that 
they  should  not  desire  any  power  beyond  the  do- 
mestic circle. 

"  Of  this  realm  Woman  is  Queen ;  it  takes  its  cue  and 
hue  from  her.  If  she  is  in  the  best  sense  womanly — if 
she  is  true  and  tender,  loving  and  heroic,  patient  and 
self-devoted,  she  consciously  and  unconsciously  organizes 
and  puts  in  operation  a  set  of  influences  that  do  more  to 
mold  the  destiny  of  the  nation  than  any  man." 

This  kind  of  flattering  half-truth  was  con- 
stantly urged  as  the  reason  why  women  should 
obey  their  husbands,  and  not  venture  outside  their 
appointed  sphere.  The  curious  theological  argu- 
ment by  which  women  justified  it  and  convinced 
themselves  that  they  were,  therefore,  morally 


i74     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

superior  to  men,   is  rehearsed  at  length  in  the 
Woman's  Record  of  1872. 

"  For  this  cause  ought  the  woman  to  have  power  on  her 
head  because  of  the  Angels.  (I  Cor.  xiv,  10;  also 
Tim.  ii.).  •  •  •  Angels  are  witnesses  that  the  woman  is 
'  the  glory  of  the  man  '.  .  .  .  This  glory  she  would  for- 
feit, should  she  attempt  to  usurp  authority  over  him.  And 
while  the  wife  is  commanded  to  reverence  and  obey  her 
husband,  is  he  not  the  superior?  In  the  estimation  of  the 
world  he  is,  because  he  holds  the  highest  place  in  the 
family;  but  the  tenure  of  his  office  proves  her  superior 
moral  endowments.  The  wife  must  reverence  and  obey 
her  husband  because  '  he  is  the  saviour  of  the  body  '  (see 
Ephes.  v,  22-23)  ;  that  is,  the  worker,  the  provider,  the 
law-giver.  God  placed  man  in  this  office  .  .  .  and  the 
wife  should  unhesitatingly  submit  to  this  law.  .  .  .  God, 
by  commanding  husbands  to  love  their  wives,  has  set  his 
seal  to  this  doctrine — that  women  are  holier  than  men. 
The  world  also  bears  witness  .  .  .  for  of  all  the  sinful 
deeds  done  on  earth,  nine-tenths  are  committed  by  man. 
.  .  .  The  Church  bears  witness  to  this  truth — more  than 
three-fourths  of  the  professed  followers  of  Christ  are 
women." 

The  ingenious  feminine  author  of  this  logic, 
Mrs.  Sarah  J.  Hale,  not  being  wholly  ignorant 
of  the  discontent  of  modern  womenkind,  clinched 
her  argument  with  the  following: 

"  Does  any  wife  say  that  her  husband  is  not  worthy  of 
this  honor?  Then  render  it  to  the  office  with  which  God 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      175 

has  invested  the  head  of  the  family;  but  use  your  priv- 
ilege of  motherhood  to  train  your  sons  so  that  the)'  may 
be  worthy  of  this  reverence  and  obedience  from  their  wives. 
Thus  through  your  suffering  the  world  may  be  made 
better." 

It  is  one  of  the  humorous  commonplaces  of 
morals  that  men  most  admire  the  virtues  they 
themselves  possess,  and  minimize  the  value  of 
those  they  find  it  difficult  to  practise.  From  time 
immemorial  men  have  cultivated  the  qualities  ac- 
quired by  predominance,  leaving  to  women  and 
servants  the  less  spectacular  virtues  of  self-sacri- 
fice, patience,  obedience,  humility,  sweetness  of 
temper,  and  sympathy,  which  were  needed  to 
make  the  home  atmosphere  soothing.  While 
men  found  it  convenient  to  inculcate  the  gentler 
attributes,  women,  per  contra,  found  it  safe  and 
praiseworthy  to  exercise  them.  In  truth,  a  triple 
premium  was  offered  for  the  virtues  of  obedience, 
self-sacrifice,  and  patience — husbands  demanded 
them,  the  Church  insisted  upon  them,  and  any 
female  who  neglected  to  acquire  them — who  ex- 
hibited self-will,  who  scorned  the  deceits  of  af- 
fectation and  loved  truth,  who  was  intellectually 
and  physically  brave — was  almost  sure  to  find  her- 
self outside  the  pale  of  marriage;  or,  if  within  it, 
a  misfit.  In  any  orthodox  society  she  was  re- 
garded both  as  immodest  and  superfluous,  a  sport 
as  it  were,  from  the  true  feminine  type. 


176     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

The  cultivation  of  these  virtues  produced,  how- 
ever, some  corresponding  feminine  deficiencies. 
The  more  women  practised  obedience,  the  less  oc- 
casion they  had  to  reason,  for  to  reason  is  often 
to  differ  from  authority.  Like  the  soldiers  at 
Balaklava : 

"  Theirs  not  to  make  reply, 
Theirs  not  to  reason  why, 
Theirs  but  to  do  and  die." 

The  "  smart "  woman,  who  could  not  help  rea- 
soning, while  still  under  the  necessity  to  obey, 
developed  a  sort  of  compensatory  shrewdness. 
The  "  managing  "  wife  was  formerly  a  very  com- 
mon type;  the  woman  of  strong  character,  who 
nominally  deferred  to  her  husband  in  everything, 
yet  achieved  her  own  will  by  subtly  persuading 
him  that  he  was  having  his  own  way.  Her 
powers  of  indirection — if  not  of  deceit — thus  be- 
came highly  developed,  while  he  was  pacified 
with  a  swollen  and  often  unmerited  self-impor- 
tance. The  children,  too,  as  they  grew  to  discre- 
tion, sometimes  joined  in  making  the  master  com- 
fortable, while  at  the  same  time  outwitting  him. 
But  a  clever  woman  in  so  anomalous  a  position 
was  not  altogether  a  dependable  creature.  She 
was  likely  to  acquire  vexatious  tricks — refusing  to 
be  bridled  now  and  then,  and  biting  in  the  stall. 
Like  the  domesticated  driving-horse,  if  she  ever 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      177 

took  the  bit  in  her  teeth  and  ran  away,  she  could 
scarcely  be  trusted  afterwards  for  family  use. 

In  the  past  century,  nevertheless,  by  far  the 
larger  number  of  women  were  well  broken;  and, 
in  proportion  as  they  were,  they  lost  the  power  of 
thinking  and  deciding  for  themselves  in  any  mat- 
ter outside  the  household  affairs  for  which  they 
were  responsible.  Such  women  not  only  followed 
the  lead  of  their  husbands,  but  asked  advice  of 
the  neighbors  in  every  detail  of  life.  If  a  child 
took  the  scarlet  fever,  the  doctor  might  be  called, 
but  his  orders  were  supplemented  by  the  con- 
tradictory suggestions  of  the  neighbor-women 
whom  the  mother  consulted.  She  had,  in  fact, 
"  no  mind  of  her  own,"  and  submitted  herself  to 
every  wind  of  doctrine,  while  thinking  herself 
conscientious  in  doing  so.  Such  a  woman  acquired 
a  habitual  state  of  indecision — choosing  a  dress 
pattern  one  day,  and,  after  exhibiting  it  to  a 
critical  friend  or  two,  returning  to  change  it  for 
another,  which  "  she  didn't  know  whether  she 
liked  or  not;"  and  which,  when  made  up,  she 
would  regard  with  discontent. 

The  model  wife,  when  left  a  widow,  trans- 
ferred her  submission  to  an  older  son  or,  in  de- 
fault of  male  relatives,  to  the  attorney  in  charge 
of  her  estate,  blindly  accepting  his  dicta  as  to 
where  she  should  live,  how  much  she  should 
spend,  and  what  was  "  proper  "  for  her,  regard- 


178      VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

less  of  her  own  comfort  or  her  technical  rights. 
After  half  a  lifetime,  perhaps,  of  loyal  industry 
and  maternal  sacrifice  she  was  "  bossed  about  " 
by  people  who  naturally  regarded  her  as  childish 
and  incapable.  In  the  practice  of  deference  and 
submission  she  had  often  lost,  also,  not  only  the 
capacity  to  judge  and  decide  for  herself,  but  the 
belief  that  she  ought  to  do  so.  It  was  as  if  the 
helpless  people  of  a  State  should  constantly  ex- 
ercise the  referendum  without  the  power  to 
initiate  measures  or  to  recall  those  who  fail  to 
fulfil  them.  And,  withal,  she  was  apt  to  fall  into 
a  morbid  state  of  suspiciousness  toward  those  who 
attempted  to  guide  her.  Her  second  childhood 
thus  began  at  middle  age,  or  as  soon  as  her  hus- 
band's hand  was  removed. 

There  is  no  more  dangerous  virtue  than  self- 
sacrifice,  for  it  cultivates  complacency  in  those 
who  consciously  practise  it,  and  is  apt  to  produce 
selfishness  in  those  who  accept  its  benefits.  Ex- 
ceptional men  have  practised  it  in  all  the  Christian 
ages  for  the  purpose  of  attaining  merit,  while 
upon  women  it  was  enforced  both  by  inevitable 
maternity  and  by  their  social  dependence.  If  the 
quality  of  self-sacrifice  in  women  and  servitors 
had  been  as  productive  of  antagonism  and  dis- 
comfort as  moral  courage,  for  instance,  or  just- 
mindedness,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  it  would 
have  been  so  disproportionately  lauded  by  man- 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      179 

kind.  Or,  if  women  themselves  had  found  un- 
selfishness as  difficult  and  odious  as  these  upset- 
ting attributes,  it  seems  probable  that  they 
would  not  have  claimed  it  for  their  characteristic 
virtue. 

There  is  no  virtue  for  which  women  have  been 
more  indiscriminately  praised  than  patience.  Of 
that  blind  acceptance  of  duty  which  is  necessary 
to  get  the  monotonous  and  unpleasant  tasks  of 
the  world  done,  they  have  certainly  the  larger 
share  as  compared  with  men.  It  was  a  neces- 
sary qualification  for  child-rearing  and  domestic 
success — as  it  has  been  in  the  laboring  peasant  and 
the  donkey  on  the  treadmill.  The  mother  who 
gave  her  whole  time  to  the  nurture  of  children 
and  to  household  cares,  would  have  become  im- 
becile had  she  not  been  able  to  adjust  her  mind 
patiently  and  cheerfully  to  a  succession  of  petty 
demands  and  services.  She  acquired,  perforce, 
an  instinctive  endurance  like  that  of  the  draft  ani- 
mal which  has  never  learned  to  balk  and  does  not 
know  that  it  can  run  away.  The  woman  who  did 
not  learn  patience  met  with  the  disapproval  of  the 
world  of  men  and  women  alike;  and  she  who  ran 
away  faced  social  ostracism,  if  she  were  not  cast 
into  outer  darkness. 

But  of  that  considered,  reasoning  patience  with 
which  the  scientist  and  the  inventor  pursue  far-off 
and  inspiring  mysteries  through  years  of  labori- 


i8o     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

ous  experiment  and  failure,  the  ordinary  woman 
developed  very  little.  Because  the  issues  of  her 
life  were  small,  innumerable,  and  rapidly  succeed- 
ing each  other,  she  had  no  time  to  consider  them 
in  perspective,  or  to  do  aught  but  attend  to  each 
faithfully  as  it  arose.  Her  capacity  for  sustained 
effort  was,  therefore,  determined  by  things  closely 
related  to  her.  Great  numbers  of  men  in  the 
business  world  subordinate  desire  and  comfort  to 
the  attainment  of  far-off  ambitions;  but  women, 
like  children,  want  to  see  immediate  results. 

But  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  self-devotion  and  uncomplainingness 
were,  after  all,  subsidiary  endowments  in  women 
as  compared  with  physical  purity.  It  might  al- 
most seem  from  the  emphasis  laid  upon  The  Fem- 
inine Virtue,  that  our  fathers  must  have  misread 
one  of  their  favorite  Scripture  passages: 

"  Though  I  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and 

though  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned, 
And  have  not  chastity, 

It  profiteth  me  nothing." 

Under  a  tradition  which  had  arisen  when  women 
were  property,  and  with  the  injunctions  of  re- 
ligion, this  one  quality  became  the  specific  and  ex- 
clusively feminine  attribute.  Virtue  had  come  to 
mean,  not  strength,  courage,  capacity,  but  chastity 
— the  female  sine  qua  non.  A  woman  might  be 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      181 

violent  in  temper,  cruel  in  speech,  selfish,  idle,  a 
devourer  of  the  substance  of  industrious  and  gen- 
erous men,  yet  if  she  were  technically  "  pure  "  she 
kept  her  place  in  the  Church  and  in  her  social 
circle.  But  if,  like  Mary  Wollstonecraft  or 
George  Eliot,  she  gave  herself  openly,  though 
there  might  be  extenuation,  and  though  she  might 
have  every  other  feminine  virtue  and  some 
masculine  ones  besides,  the  pure  women  and  the 
unchaste  men  of  her  world  would  have  no  place 
for  her.  Not  even  the  high  quality  of  courage 
and  honesty  with  which  she  accepted  her  anom- 
alous position,  could  save  her  from  being 
classed  with  the  parasitic  mistress  who  gave  bodily 
service  in  return  for  luxury.  As  for  the  few 
who,  tormented  by  the  natural  human  hunger  for 
joy  and  adventure,  broke  away  from  home  ties 
altogether,  there  was  seldom  even  a  modicum  of 
pity.  Yet,  however  futile  their  quest,  they  were 
at  any  rate,  themselves  not  hypocrites — and  surely 
every  human  being  may  have  a  choice  of  the  kind 
of  evil  that  is  most  tolerable. 

For  us,  in  an  age  more  generous  and  discrim- 
inating toward  human  frailties,  it  is  difficult  to  un- 
derstand how  so  cruel  a  standard  could  have  come 
about;  yet  it  goes  back  to  the  primitive  conditions 
of  society,  in  which  women  were  quasi-slaves  and 
chattels.  Professor  Thomas  has  very  acutely  re- 
marked: 


i8z      VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

'  The  morality  of  man  is  peculiarly  a  morality  of 
prowess  and  contract,  while  woman's  morality  is  to  a 
greater  degree  a  morality  of  bodily  habits,  both  because 
child-bearing,  which  is  a  large  factor  in  determining 
sexual  morality,  is  more  closely  connected  with  her  per- 
son, and  in  consequence  also  of  male  jealousy.  ...  In 
the  course  of  history  woman  developed  an  excessive  and 
scrupulous  concern  for  the  propriety  of  her  behavior,  espe- 
cially in  connection  with  her  bodily  habits;  and  this  in 
turn  became  fixed  and  particularized  by  fashion,  with  the 
result  that  not  only  her  physical  life  became  circum- 
scribed, but  her  attention  and  mental  interest  became  lim- 
ited largely  to  safeguarding  and  enhancing  her  person."  * 

Darwin,  in  the  Descent  of  Man,  says  that  habit 
was  a  more  effective  factor  than  selection  in  the 
development  of  human  morality.  It  has  already 
been  shown,  in  the  chapter  on  the  Conventions  of 
Girlhood,  that  a  prudish  degree  of  modesty  was 
enforced  upon  girls  literally  from  the  cradle;  and 
that  the  vaguely  evasive  phrases  of  teachers  and 
clergymen  about  purity,  coincident  with  a  com- 
plete "  conspiracy  of  silence  "  as  to  physiological 
facts,  produced  an  abnormal  state  of  mind  toward 
the  whole  subject.  Although  clergymen  were,  as 
a  class,  more  refined  and  gentle  than  average 
men,  they  were  not  the  less  inclined  to  insist  upon 
men's  standards  of  propriety  for  their  female 
parishioners.  In  each  community  they  stood  for 
conservatism — for  the  "  superior  past,"  for  the 

*  Thomas,  Sex  and  Society,  pp.  219-220. 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      183 

gospel  of  the  Fathers  as  then  interpreted — and, 
naturally,  resisted  any  attempt  to  ameliorate  the 
Puritan  code  of  morality.  Indeed,  to  men  so 
high  and  narrow,  propriety  was  morality.  Hu- 
mility, obedience,  charity,  Godliness,  and,  above 
all,  propriety  of  behavior  and  chastity — these 
were  the  virtues  indispensable  to  Christian 
women. 

As  to  the  attitude  of  women  themselves,  Miss 
Ida  Tarbell  has  correctly  described  it: 

'  They  got  from  the  Church  the  reason  for  things  as 
they  found  them — the  reason  for  their  submission  to 
masculine  authority — the  explanation  for  their  place  in 
society,  their  program  of  activities  .  .  .  and,  as  a  rule, 
they  took  the  teachings  quite  literally  and  devoutly." 

But,  aside  from  the  emphasis  laid  upon  bodily 
purity  by  parents  and  moral  teachers,  the  two 
great  economic  influences  from  which  that  in- 
sistence had  originally  come,  dress  and  slavery, 
were  operating  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and 
still  persist  in  some  degree  at  the  present  day. 
The  sociologists  tell  us  that  so  long  as  the  habit 
of  nakedness  was  general,  no  such  theory  of  mod- 
esty existed;  but  that  so  soon  as  humankind  for 
any  reason  began  to  cover  the  body,  nakedness 
became  conspicuous,  and,  thus,  clothing  reinforced 
the  suggestiveness  of  sex  characters.  It  is  a  per- 
tinent fact  that  in  proportion  as  clothing  became 


184     VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

elaborate  and  dress  a  pursuit  in  itself,  ideas  of 
propriety  became  more  inflexible  and  perverted. 
Among  civilized  peoples  decollete  dress  has  no 
longer  any  relation  to  climatic  conditions,  but  is 
coincident  with  a  luxury-loving  society;  and  the 
conspicuous  outlining  of  the  figure,  which  was 
once  solely  practised  by  the  slave  and  the  pro- 
fessionally unchaste  class,  has  been  adopted  by  the 
modest  female  of  modern  times. 

In  primitive  and  semi-civilized  societies  women 
were  marketable  commodities  rather  than  human 
beings.  Immodesty — that  is,  any  behavior  cal- 
culated to  attract  the  attention  of  strange  men — 
might  cause  the  human  chattel  to  be  stolen,  and 
the  female  who  was  unchaste,  whether  by  accident 
or  choice,  was  regarded  as  damaged  goods.  The 
phenomenon  of  jealousy  even  yet  goes  back  ob- 
scurely to  the  fact  that  not  even  an  unmarried 
woman  owned  her  own  person;  while  the  appeal 
to  the  "  unwritten  law  "  —still  sometimes  made 
to  escape  the  penalty  of  murders  of  passion — is 
based  on  the  convention  that  the  possession  of  the 
body  is  the  asset  of  an  owner,  not  the  gift  of  a 
partner. 

The  idea  so  prevalent  in  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, that  chastity  in  a  female  constituted  her 
chief  qualification  to  the  respect  of  mankind,  pro- 
duced some  curious  and  even  humorous  perver- 
sions. Modesty — the  behavior  becoming  to  the 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      185 

chaste  female — became  an  end  in  itself.  It  is  re- 
lated of  M'a'am  Betty,  the  dame-tutor  of  Lydia 
Child,  "  a  spinster  of  supernatural  shyness,"  that 
the  chief  calamity  of  her  life  was  that  Dr.  Brooks 
once  saw  her  drinking  water  from  the  spout  of  a 
tea-kettle.  Yet  this  same  proper  lady,  we  are 
told,  was  not  only  shockingly  untidy,  but  chewed 
tobacco!  A  similar  distortion  of  ideas  is  il- 
lustrated by  the  persistence  in  some  churches  of 
the  convention  that  women  must  not  be  uncov- 
ered; the  woman  who  should  take  off  her  hat 
would  be  regarded  as  an  "  immodest  female." 

It  has  come  to  be  a  fact  that  conspicuosity, 
which  is  everywhere  and  in  all  ages  the  pro- 
fessional qualification  of  the  unchaste,  may  now 
be  safely  practised  by  any  nice  woman,  so  long  as 
it  is  achieved  in  accordance  with  the  current 
fashion.  On  the  other  hand,  the  adventurous 
woman,  who  is  a  sort  of  composite  produced  by 
idleness  and  ennui,  by  love  of  excitement  and  of 
luxury,  plays  on  the  passions  of  men  while  re- 
taining the  control  of  her  own  person.  She  be- 
gins, at  least,  by  drawing  a  clear  line  between  her 
own  technical  virtue  and  the  wickedness  of  those 
who  sell  themselves  frankly  into  bodily  service. 

Both  the  inflexibility  and  the  inconsistency  of 
the  conventions  involved  in  the  requirements  of 
technical  chastity  in  the  past  century  are  best  il- 
lustrated, perhaps,  by  the  laws  relating  to  the 


1 86      VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

age  of  consent  in  young  girls.  Even  as  late  as 
1885,  by  the  laws  of  many  states,  young  girls 
were  made  capable  of  consenting  to  their  own 
ruin  at  ten  years  of  age,  and  in  Delaware  at  the 
age  of  seven.  Even  yet  there  are  two  states 
which  set  the  technical  age  of  seduction  at  twelve 
and  one  at  ten  years  of  age.  Yet  girls  in  tutelage 
might  not  make  wills,  contracts,  or  deeds,  under 
eighteen  to  twenty  years  of  age.  They  were 
never  willingly  permitted  to  know  anything  about 
the  physiology  of  their  own  bodies  or  the 
processes  of  reproduction — they  must  obey  their 
parents — but  they  might  be  seduced  with  im- 
punity during  and  even  before  the  age  of  puberty. 
And  when  their  childish  bodies  had  been  devoured 
by  men,  the  virtuously  conventional  society  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century  made  outcasts  and  harlots  of 
them.  In  truth,  there  is  no  cruelty  more  terrible 
than  that  of  ignorantly  good  people. 

In  the  feministic  literature  of  two  generations 
ago  certain  words  denoting  moral  qualities  of  the 
highest  status  are  conspicuously  lacking.  Fe- 
males were  repeatedly  adjured  to  be  humble  and 
patient,  but  courage  was  not  urged  upon  them; 
they  were  besought  to  be  tender  and  devoted,  but 
just-mindedness  was  not  included  among  their 
cardinal  virtues.  Charity,  in  both  its  senses,  was 
inculcated,  but  of  honor  it  was  assumed  that 
women  could  have  slight  need.  The  differentia- 


VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE      187 

tion  of  morals  was  seemingly  as  complete  as  the 
social  habits  of  the  two  sexes.  For  courage  might 
have  implied  conscientious  independence  on  the 
part  of  wives  and  daughters;  which  did  not,  of 
course,  appeal  to  heads  of  families  any  more  than 
it  does  now  to  political  bosses.  Justice  is  a  far- 
off  word,  even  in  the  mouths  of  men,  and  was 
certainly  too  high  for  the  feeble  minds  of  our 
foremothers.  Such  justice  as  there  was,  was 
precious;  to  be  handed  over  in  homeopathic 
doses  by  the  heads  of  families,  whose  moral 
standards  were  practical  rather  than  ideal.  And 
as  for  honor,  whether  moral  or  commercial,  men 
were,  theoretically  at  least,  still  the  protectors  of 
women,  and  therefore  entitled  to  its  exclusive  ex- 
ercise. 

Thus,  in  brief,  it  had  come  about  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  that  women  had  a  monopoly  of 
the  passive  virtues  of  subservience,  and,  for  lack 
of  exercise,  the  more  positive  and  fundamental 
moral  attributes  were  in  abeyance.  Their  one 
essential  and  superlative  virtue,  chastity,  over- 
shadowed all  and  led  to  the  neglect  of  others 
more  spiritual  and  not  less  important.  The  more 
"  typically  feminine  "  a  woman  was,  the  more 
she  was  destined  not  merely  to  subordination,  but 
to  become  the  prey  of  shrewd  and  selfish  persons. 
Her  humble  and  narrow  principles,  evolved  in 
devotion  to  home,  husband;  and  children,  gave 


i88      VIRTUES  OF  SUBSERVIENCE 

her  no  leverage  upon  a  wicked  world;  and  she 
must  piously  shut  her  eyes  to  the  unchastity  of 
any  man  who  offered  himself  as  father  to  her  un- 
born children.  Lacking  initiative,  courage,  and 
the  normal  egotism,  when  she  was  blindly  driven 
into  competitive  industry  she  beat  about  among 
the  underbrush,  bruising  her  tender  inexperience, 
and  unable  to  follow  or  to  mark  out  her  own 
trail. 


SECTION  III 
SOME  EXCEPTIONS 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

"  The  Gospel  is  the  most  tremendous  engine  of  democracy 
ever  forged.  It  is  destined  to  break  in  pieces  all  castes,  priv- 
ileges, and  oppressions.  Perhaps  the  last  caste  to  be  destroyed 
will  be  that  of  sex." — HELEN  B.  MONTGOMERY. 

"  The  power  of  educated  womanhood  in  the  world  is  simply 
the  power  of  skilled  service.  .  .  .  The  world  is  full  of  need 
and  every  opportunity  is  a  duty.  Preparation  for  these  duties 
is  education,  whatever  form  it  may  take  and  whatever  service 
may  result.  The  trained,  which  means  the  educated  in  mind 
and  hand,  win  influence  and  power  simply  because  they  know 
how." — ISABELLA  THOBURN. 

"  There  is  nothing  in  the  Universe  that  I  fear,  save  that  I 
shall  not  know  all  my  duty  or  shall  fail  to  perform  it." — MARY 
LYON,  1849. 

THE  forces  which  were  transforming  and  de- 
stroying the  established  traditions  of  women's 
lives  in  the  last  century  produced  very  different 
effects  upon  them,  according  to  their  individual 
temperaments  and  breeding,  and  the  degree  of 
social  restriction  to  which  they  were  subjected. 
While  some  exploded  in  an  indignant  demand  for 
their  rights,  others,  scarcely  less  discontented,  but 
lacking  initiative  and  courage,  set  conventional- 

191 


192    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

ity  aside  with  more  discretion.  By  far  the 
larger  number,  however,  unconscious  of  the  im- 
pulse that  moved  them,  instinctively  responded 
to  it  while  still  endeavoring  to  remain  within 
their  appointed  sphere.  They  accepted  as  or- 
dained and  necessary  their  indirect  relation  to 
the  world  outside  the  home,  and  adapted  as  best 
they  might  their  fledgling  spirits  to  the  shell  in 
which  they  found  themselves.  They  were  as- 
sured that  woman's  power  lay  in  her  "  influence." 
If  the  lives  of  their  men-folk  showed  small  im- 
press of  their  prayers  and  innocent  admoni- 
tions, they,  nevertheless,  believed  themselves  ap- 
pointed agents  of  morality  and  trusted  to  an  in- 
scrutable Providence  to  make  that  influence 
effective. 

A  few — whom  we  have  called  the  Elect — felt 
a  call  from  God  which  transcended  any  that 
women  had  ever  known.  To  those  who  believed 
that  their  social  responsibility  lay  in  domestic 
sacrifice  and  consecration,  the  religious  awaken- 
ing of  the  early  Nineteenth  Century  brought  a 
special  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  womanly 
devotion — a  way  not  in  any  wise  inconsistent 
with  the  strictest  canons  of  female  duty,  yet 
leading  out  into  a  foreign  world,  where  pro- 
founder  consecration  was  required.  The  terri- 
fying, yet  fascinating,  tales  of  the  heathen  in 
kingdoms  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe  lent  a 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    193 

glamor  to  the  work  of  foreign  missions.  Their 
strange  unchristian  customs  woke,  in  hearts  filled 
with  religious  fervor,  the  primal  instinct  of  the 
born  adventurer.  And  not  alone  among  men; 
for  among  women  missionaries  there  have  been 
some  with  as  great  a  desire  as  a  Stanley  or  a 
Peary  for  the  unknown  and  the  picturesque. 

Men  who  dedicated  themselves  to  foreign  mis- 
sionary work  were  expected,  as  part  of  their 
preparation,  to  choose  for  wives  women  of  ex- 
ceptional piety  and  bodily  vigor,  not  only  as  a 
safeguard  against  evil,  but  to  double  their  own 
efficiency  by  establishing  among  lost  souls  a  model 
Christian  household.  Now  and  then  these  quite 
human  apostles  took  with  them  some  exemplary 
but  feeble  young  girl,  who  shortly  laid  down  her 
life  in  a  strange  country  for  a  cause  that  she  did 
not  comprehend;  but,  for  the  most  part,  they 
chose  prayerfully  some  young  woman  whose 
local  reputation  for  piety  and  competence  marked 
her  out  as  suitable  for  missionary  labors.  Many 
a  romantic  girl,  filled  with  religious  enthusiasm, 
and  after  the  slightest  acquaintance  with  a  young 
clergyman,  married  the  Cause  rather  than  the 
Man. 

Whether  congenially  mated  or  not,  there  was 
scant  time  for  uxorious  sentiment  in  the  exac- 
tions of  the  arduous  life  to  which  they  went. 
The  hardships  of  their  physical  existence,  and 


194    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

the  ever-pressing  miseries  of  the  needy  creatures 
to  whom  they  had  dedicated  their  service,  over- 
topped their  merely  personal  griefs.  Into  many 
such  families  child  after  child  was  born,  to  fade 
away  prematurely  in  an  enervating  climate;  and 
such  children  as  survived  were  of  necessity  sent 
to  America  to  grow  up  among  strangers.  Both 
parents  found  their  reward  in  the  glory  of  the 
greater  sacrifice;  and  the  sons  might  well  dedicate 
their  easier  tasks,  as  did  the  son  of  Adoniram 
Judson : 

"  To  the  children  of  the  missionaries,  the  involuntary 
inheritors  of  their  parents'  sufferings  and  rewards." 

On  first  thought  it  might  seem  that  no  woman 
would  be  farther  from  sharing  the  discontents 
which  were  moving  her  sex  in  America  to 
struggle  against  their  social  bonds,  than  the  mis- 
sionary wife.  There  was  certainly  nothing  novel 
in  the  consecration  of  wives  to  their  husbands 
and  children,  since  it  had  been  the  accepted  duty 
of  woman  throughout  the  ages.  But  little  as  she 
might  sympathize  with  woman's  rights,  it  was 
the  peculiar  distinction  of  the  missionary  wife  to 
dedicate  herself,  not  like  plain  women  to  her 
family,  but  to  the  Cause  of  Christ,  counting  it  all 
glory  to  share  the  perils  of  the  pioneers  who  car- 
ried Christianity  wherever  men  lay  in  darkness. 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    195 

"  Judson  in  his  prison,  Moffat  with  the  savages  in 
South  Africa,  Chalmers  in  the  wilderness  of  New  Guinea, 
Hunt  and  Calvert  in  blood-stained  Fiji,  Patson  in  the 
New  Hebrides,  all  these  and  thousands  more  had  some 
woman  who  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  to  them,  sharing 
weariness,  danger,  loneliness,  sickness,  death." 

It  is  written  that  of  twelve  missionaries  sent  to 
Sierra  Leone  in  1823,  ten  of  whom  were  hus- 
bands and  wives,  six  died  that  year,  and  four 
more  in  eighteen  months;  of  the  women  none 
survived,  and  three  were  buried  in  the  first  year, 
with  their  babes  beside  them.  However  un- 
aware of  it,  these  women  were  as  much  fulfilling 
their  inevitable  share  in  the  emancipation  of  their 
sex  as  those  who  suffered  ostracism  for  demand- 
ing equal  rights. 

No  more  inspiring  illustration  of  the  unpre- 
meditated manner  in  which  such  women  took  a 
new  place  in  the  world  can  be  given,  perhaps, 
than  the  lives  of  Ann  Hasseltine,  Sarah  H. 
Boardman,  and  Emily  Chubbock,  each  of  whom 
successively  became  the  wife  of  Adoniram  Jud- 
son, the  first  missionary  to  Burmah.  Of  the  first 
it  has  been  said  that  her  record  and  her  sufferings 
have  no  parallel  in  missionary  annals.  A  well- 
born and  well-educated  New  England  girl,  she 
was  fascinated  as  much,  it  may  be,  by  the  mission 
as  by  the  personality  of  the  young  theological 
student;  and  her  life  was  looked  upon  by  them 


196    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

both  as  even  more  a  partnership  in  apostleship 
than  an  obedience  to  wifely  duty.  During  the 
fourteen  years  of  her  marriage,  while  she  carried 
domestic  cares  and  bore  children  for  whom  there 
was  no  hope  of  survival,  she  performed  also 
prodigies  of  missionary  labor.  When,  during 
the  war  between  England  and  Burmah,  Dr.  Jud- 
son  was  thrown  into  the  death  prison,  she  was 
left  quite  unprotected.  With  an  infant  in  her 
arms,  she  daily  visited  and  comforted  the  pris- 
oners, and  her  diplomacy  and  moving  appeals  to 
the  government  prepared  the  way  for  the  ultimate 
release  of  all  the  English  captives.  Even  when 
she  went  home  with  health  undermined  by  fever, 
hardships,  and  grief,  she  spent  her  furlough  in 
rousing  interest  in  missions,  finding  time  to  write 
and  translate  extensively  in  the  difficult  Burmese 
language.  One  is  not  surprised  to  learn  that 
when  her  body  at  last  gave  way  from  sheer  ex- 
haustion, she  was  "  glad  to  go "  to  a  world 
which  promised  rest.  She  had  sacrificed  her 
children  as  ungrudgingly  as  Abraham;  she  had 
laid  down  her  life  as  deliberately  as  John  Huss; 
for  she  had  given  herself  body  and  soul,  not  to 
Adoniram  Judson,  but  to  the  work  of  the  Lord 
in  whom  she  believed. 

Sarah  Boardman,  the  second  wife,  gave  her- 
self with  just  as  clear  a  vision  when  she  married 
Dr.  Judson,  for  she  was  then  the  widow  of  a 


197 

missionary  who  had  died  in  the  field.  And 
again  the  union  was  a  partnership  in  the  promo- 
tion of  the  missions  rather  than  for  the  attain- 
ment of  any  mere  domestic  comfort.  After  ten 
years  she  too  gave  her  life  gladly  on  the  altar 
of  missionary  teaching.  Yet  this  ruthless  man 
of  God  had  no  hesitation,  apparently,  in  inducing 
a  delicate  literary  woman  a  few  years  afterward 
to  return  to  the  Orient  with  him.  Though  he 
died  prematurely,  and  she  was  able  to  return  to 
her  native  land  with  his  children,  she,  too,  paid 
the  penalty  in  an  early  death,  though  not  until 
she  had  written  the  biography  of  the  first  Mrs. 
Judson. 

Estimated  by  the  unchristian  mind,  the  lives 
of  these  women  might  appear  to  have  been  sacri- 
ficed to  the  visionary  egotism  of  a  religious 
fanatic.  But  the  utter  absence  of  any  petty 
feminine  exactions  toward  their  husband,  and 
the  evident  admiration  which  each  displayed,  not 
only  for  his  mission,  but  for  her  own  predecessor, 
leaves  no  doubt  that  these  martyrs  to  a  cause 
counted  it  a  privilege  so  to  die  for  a  great  idea. 
Many  a  sister  at  home  made  almost  as  great 
sacrifices  of  her  personal  desires  and  comfort  to 
some  merely  human  man,  who  accepted  it  as  due 
to  himself  and  quite  inevitable  in  the  life  of  a 
proper  domestic  woman.  The  wives  of  Adoni- 
ram  Judson  had  at  least  the  compensation  of  giv- 


198    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

ing  their  lives  to  something  larger  than  them- 
selves; and  of  breathing  freely  in  a  world  from 
which  all  the  pettier  feminine  coercions  had 
dropped  away. 

Their  pitiful  and  more  profound  experiences 
served  other  women,  too,  by  affording  inspiration 
to  those  who,  not  elected  to  special  work,  pur- 
sued the  commonplace  round  of  living.  Com- 
fortable women,  in  whom  the  horrors  of  jails 
and  asylums  in  their  own  towns  had  not  roused 
an  active  sense  of  social  responsibility,  felt  their 
imaginations  kindle  at  the  recital  of  heathen  bar- 
barities and  missionary  sacrifice. 

"  Though  they  had  little  to  give,  the  egg  money,  the 
butter  money,  the  rag  money,  was  theirs  to  squander  in 
missions  if  they  chose.  Hundreds  of  female  cent  societies 
.  .  .  mite  societies,  female  praying  societies,  sewing  and 
Dorcas  societies,  sprang  up  in  support  of  missions." 

They  begged  from  door  to  door;  they  devised 
leaflets,  wrote  missionary  stories  and  poems,  and 
published  news  from  the  foreign  field;  and  by 
such  inconspicuous  cooperation  gained  enlarge- 
ment of  their  own  lives.  At  the  same  time  they 
became  imbued  with  the  thought  that  some 
women  might  be  elected  to  a  wider  destiny,  not 
less  feminine  and  moral,  but  larger  than  their 
own. 

Thus   the   members   of   churches   were   being 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    199 

prepared  for  the  proposal  that  single  women 
should  be  educated  to  go  out  as  teachers  and 
medical  missionaries.  Yet  it  was  thirty  years 
before  this  proposal  was  acted  upon,  so  deep- 
rooted  was  the  tradition  still  that  an  unmarried 
woman  could  properly  do  nothing  in  the  world 
alone.  Even  after  its  practical  adoption,  the  mis- 
sionary spinster  was  often  regarded  as  a  sort  of 
social  roustabout  to  the  men  in  the  field.  It  is 
related  of  Bishop  Thoburn  that,  convinced  that 
it  was  impossible  for  men  to  reach  the  Hindu 
household,  he  sent  for  his  sister,  Isabella,  to  come 
out  to  India  for  this  work.  Miss  Thoburn,  who 
had  had  a  large  experience  in  teaching  and  nurs- 
ing, objected  to  her  brother's  assumption  that  she 
had  come  out  merely  to  be  his  clerk  and  as- 
sistant, and  the  Bishop  was  compelled  to  recon- 
sider the  situation.  He  wrote  thus  frankly  of 
his  conversion  to  a  broader  view: 

"  I  accepted  the  fact  that  a  Christian  woman  sent  out 
to  the  field  was  a  Christian  missionary,  and  that  her  time 
was  as  precious,  her  work  as  important,  and  her  rights 
as  sacred  as  those  of  the  more  conventional  missionaries 
of  the  other  sex.  The  old-time  notion  that  a  woman  in 
her  best  estate  is  only  a  helper,  and  should  only  be  recog- 
nized as  an  assistant,  is  based  on  a  very  shallow  fallacy." 

Yet  even  so  just  a  man  as  this  could  not  wholly 
divest  his  mind  of  the  tradition  that  woman  was 
made  for  man,  for  he  adds: 


200    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

"  She  is  a  helper  in  the  marriage  relation,  but  in  God's 
wide  vineyard  there  are  many  departments  of  labor  in 
which  she  can  successfully  maintain  the  position  of  an 
independent  worker." 

The  increasing  demand  of  the  foreign  mission 
work  for  women  trained  in  nursing  and  medicine, 
reacted  helpfully  upon  the  struggle  then  in 
progress  at  home  for  the  admission  of  women 
to  the  medical  profession.  While  the  Philadel- 
phia Medical  Society  was  excommunicating  some 
of  its  members  for  lecturing  in  a  woman's  medical 
college,  the  experience  of  men  in  the  evangeliza- 
tion of  the  heathen  had  forced  upon  them  and 
their  boards  of  management  the  conviction  that 
"the  heathen  woman  drowned  all  ideas;"  and 
that  "  the  citadel  of  heathendom  was  in  the  home, 
which  could  only  be  taken  by  the  assault  of 
women."  This  imperative  need  created  a  de- 
mand for  trained  women.  As  Helen  Mont- 
gomery puts  it,  in  her  Western  Women  in 
Eastern  Lands: 

"  Whether  there  were  to  be  women  physicians  in  Amer- 
ica was  a  matter  of  interest ;  but  in  Asia  it  was  a  matter 
of  life  and  death.  The  women  of  half  the  world  were 
shut  out  from  medical  assistance  unless  they  could  receive 
it  at  the  hands  of  women." 

Here  was  a  field  of  high  professional  labor 
which  men  had  perforce  to  yield  to  women. 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    201 

While  the  clergy  at  home  were  still  preaching 
that  medicine  was  outside  the  sphere  of  woman; 
and  the  medical  profession  itself,  with  greater 
vehemence  and  less  excuse,  was  denying  them  op- 
portunities for  study  and  practice,  a  few  young 
women  began  to  prepare  themselves  for  this 
service.  Clara  Swain,  the  first  fully-equipped 
medical  woman  to  be  sent  to  India  in  1869,  suf- 
fered to  the  full  all  the  hindrances  set  by 
prejudice  in  the  path  of  the  unusual  woman. 
Upon  her  fell  the  combined  resistance  of  men 
physicians,  of  the  conservatives  in  the  churches, 
and  of  a  society  still  permeated  with  the  conven- 
tional views  of  feminine  limitations. 

WThile  more  than  a  thousand  women,  married 
and  single,  were  suffering  moral  and  social  exile 
in  foreign  lands  for  the  succor  of  lost  souls,  the 
sisters  at  home  were  also  caught  on  the  swell  of 
a  humanitarian  wave  that  was  destined  to  carry 
a  great  body  of  pious,  domestic  women  far  out- 
side the  limits  of  orthodox  femininity.  Temper- 
ance reform,  already  a  generation  old,  had  lan- 
guished while  men  and  women  alike  were  ab- 
sorbed in  the  exigencies  of  war.  But  the  experi- 
ence of  that  struggle  had  given  women  occasion 
for  the  development  of  their  powers  of  organi- 
zation; and  when  it  was  past  they  no  longer  de- 
sired to  return  to  that  exclusive  sphere  from 


202    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

which   they   had   been   wrenched   by   a   national 
emergency. 

Most  of  the  temperance  leaders  were  as  far 
as  possible  from  supposing  that  they  were  allied 
with  the  emancipation  of  their  sex.  They  had 
little  sympathy  with  woman's  rights,  and  no  in- 
tention of  adopting  its  direct  and  startling 
methods.  Although  there  was  scarcely  a  state  in 
which  drunkenness  was  then  recognized  as  cause 
for  divorce,  the  temperance  women  were  shocked 
by  the  proposition  of  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  to 
adopt  a  resolution  that  no  woman  should  remain 
in  the  relation  of  wife  with  a  confirmed  drunkard. 
They,  nevertheless,  justified  their  own  unprece- 
dented campaigns  on  the  orthodox  ground  of 
their  peculiar  mission  for  the  moral  uplift  of  man- 
kind. The  Woman's  Crusade,  which  spread  in 
1874  from  Ohio  over  all  the  Northern  States  with 
a  kind  of  pentecostal  power,  has  been  sympa- 
thetically described  by  Frances  E.  Willard: 

"  That  women  should  thus  dare,  after  they  had  so  long 
endured,  was  a  wonder.  .  .  .  Woman-like,  they  took  their 
knitting,  their  zephyr-work,  or  their  embroidery,  and 
simply  swarmed  into  the  drink-shops,  seated  themselves, 
and  watched  the  proceedings.  Usually  they  came  in  a 
long  procession  from  their  rendezvous  at  some  church, 
where  they  had  held  morning  prayer-meeting,  entered  the 
saloon  with  kind  faces,  and  the  sweet  songs  of  church  and 
home  upon  their  lips,  while  some  Madonna-like  leader 


203 

.  .  .  took  her  stand  beside  the  bar,  and  gently  asked  if  she 
might  read  God's  word  and  offer  prayer. 

"  Women  gave  of  their  best  during  the  two  months  of 
that  wonderful  uprising.  All  other  engagements  were 
laid  aside;  elegant  women  of  society  walked  beside  quiet 
women  of  the  home,  school,  and  shop  in  the  strange  pro- 
cessions that  soon  lined  the  chief  streets,  not  only  of  nearly 
every  town  and  village  in  the  state  that  was  its  birthplace, 
but  of  leading  cities  there  and  elsewhere;  and  voices  trained 
in  Paris  and  Berlin  sang  '  Rock  of  Ages,  cleft  for  me,'  in 
the  malodorous  air  of  liquor-rooms  and  beer-halls. 

"  Thousands  of  men  signed  the  pledge  .  .  .  others 
slunk  out  of  sight,  and  a  few  cursed  the  women  openly; 
.  .  .  soon  the  saloonkeepers  surrendered  in  large  num- 
bers .  .  .  the  liquor  traffic  was  temporarily  driven  out  of 
two  hundred  and  fifty  towns  to  which  the  Crusade  ex- 
tended. ...  In  Cincinnati  the  women  .  .  .  were  ar- 
rested and  locked  up  in  jail,  in  Cleveland  dogs  were  set 
upon  the  Crusaders,  while  in  several  places  they  were 
smoked  out  or  had  the  hose  turned  upon  them.  Men  say 
there  was  a  spirit  in  the  air  such  as  they  never  knew  be- 
fore ;  a  sense  of  God  and  human  brotherhood." 


This  extraordinary  outburst  on  the  part  of  the 
mothers  of  the  country,  a  class  that  had  hitherto 
been  untouched  by  the  political  and  social  reforms 
proposed  by  the  woman's  rights  group,  culmi- 
nated in  the  organization  of  the  Woman's  Chris- 
tian Temperance  Union,  which  spread  through- 
out every  state  in  the  Union,  and  ultimately  to 
foreign  countries.  In  1890  it  was  publishing 
130,000  pages  of  temperance  literature,  and  a 


204   THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

journal  of  its  own;  it  had  established  a  temper- 
ance hospital,  and  a  lecture  bureau,  built  a 
woman's  temple,  and  was  extending  its  work  to 
schools,  restaurants,  lodging-houses  for  the 
friendless,  and  many  other  forms  of  philanthropy. 
With  the  extent  and  variety  of  its  work  we  are 
not  here  particularly  concerned;  the  significance 
of  this  movement  for  our  present  purpose  lies  in 
its  unconscious  expression  of  precisely  the  same 
expanding  spirit  as  that  displayed  by  such  widely 
separated  groups  as  the  suffragists,  the  mission- 
aries, and  the  literary  amateurs. 

Men  had  concentrated  their  temperance  agita- 
tion chiefly  upon  legislative  reforms,  and  pro- 
moted it  by  exhortation.  But  wome/i,  in  their 
characteristic  manner  of  inexperience,  attacked 
it  from  forty  different  sides,  all  of  which  grew 
naturally  out  of  their  feminine  conception  of  the 
disasters  wrought  upon  the  family  life  by  the  use 
of  intoxicants.  Their  methods  were  perfectly 
direct  and  simple.  Total  abstinence  and  prohibi- 
tion were  the  uncompromising  words  around 
which  they  rallied.  They  pledged  and  converted 
the  drunkard,  and  they  made  the  saloon  odious 
and  often  ridiculous.  They  harassed  politicians 
and  legislators  with  petitions,  until  public  men 
dared  not  refuse  directly  the  measures  they  de- 
manded for  fear  of  having  their  devious  records 
on  the  drink  question,  and  on  the  social  evil,  ex- 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    205 

posed.  Like  the  enfant  terrible  in  the  family, 
these  devoted  women  said  everything  right  out — 
innocently  setting  an  example  to  their  imitators, 
the  modern  muck-rakers. 

Nor  did  they  limit  themselves  to  direct  attack 
upon  institutions  and  legislation.  Since  they 
were  "  to  carry  the  home  into  the  world,"  they 
must  needs  devise  means  for  the  protection  of 
their  children  from  the  three  curses:  "the  curse 
of  narcotic  poisons,  alcohol,  and  nicotine;  the 
curse  of  gambling;  the  curse  of  the  social  sin, 
deadlier  than  all."  The  preventive  measures 
which  they  undertook,  and  especially  the  so-called 
scientific  temperance  instruction  which  they  suc- 
ceeded in  introducing  into  the  public  curriculum, 
afford  a  striking  illustration  of  both  the  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  the  organization.  Peculi- 
arly ignorant  as  women  have  generally  been  on 
physiological  matters,  they  adopted  statements 
as  to  the  effects  of  alcohol  on  the  human  system 
which  suited  their  personal  bias;  and  by  their  per- 
tinacity managed  to  get  them  officially  accepted 
by  school  authorities. 

They  had  previously  commanded  the  approval, 
if  not  the  cooperation,  of  the  general  public,  and 
even  of  the  drinking  class,  in  their  campaign 
against  drunkenness,  the  treating  habit,  and  the 
saloon.  But  when  they  filled  schoolbooks  with 
dogmatic  statements,  unjustifiably  exaggerated, 


206    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

if  not  untrue,  concerning  a  scientific  question 
about  which  the  scientists  themselves  disagreed, 
they  exposed  their  cause  to  easy  attack.  The 
mistake  then  made — not  because  they  were 
women,  but  because  they  were  ignorant — checked 
the  sympathy  and  undermined  the  confidence  of 
many  intelligent  men  and  women  whose  support 
they  could  ill  afford  to  lose. 

Aside  from  important  concrete  results  in  social 
reform  with  which  the  Woman's  Christian  Tem- 
perance Union  should  be  credited,  their  contribu- 
tion to  the  feminist  movement  was  also  consider- 
able. Thousands  of  housemothers  had  learned 
to  work  in  small  groups  together,  and  even  ag- 
gressively, for  the  public  welfare  outside  the 
church  and  the  home.  Having  no  experience  in 
parliamentary  tactics,  they  developed  remarkably 
flexible  methods  of  their  own.  By  ignoring 
theological  disputations,  as  women  generally  do, 
they  were  able  to  avoid  sectarianism  and  section- 
alism. The  organization  is,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
few  instances  in  which  women  have  not  been  in 
the  least  imitative,  for  they  neither  asked  nor 
took  the  advice  of  men.  By  the  very  spon- 
taneity and  originality  of  their  measures,  these 
women  of  a  purely  domestic  type  emancipated 
themselves  into  a  world  of  larger  ideas.  Begin- 
ning with  a  disavowal  of  connection  with  the  mili- 
tant section  of  femininity,  they  ended  with  a 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    207 

motto    as    unequivocal    as    that    of    the    suffra- 
gists: 

"  Woman  will  bless  and  brighten  every  place  she  enters, 
and  she  will  enter  every  place." 

The  woman's  temperance  movement  — "  of 
women,  by  women,  for  humanity  " — exhibits  in 
a  peculiar  degree  the  unpremeditated  and  in- 
stinctive character  of  the  impulses  which  drove 
even  mothers,  a  specialized  and  isolated  class,  to 
break  the  conventions  of  their  time  and  to  ex- 
press themselves  in  larger  ways  than  domesticity. 
A  third  class  of  homekeeping  women — the 
Ladies  Bountiful — illustrates  the  tendency  of 
their  conservative  kind  to  adjust  the  traditional 
feminine  limitations  with  some  form  of  religio- 
humanitarian  service  outside  the  home.  In  so 
far  as  they  were  merely  using  their  advantages  of 
wealth  and  birth  in  the  service  of  the  poor,  they 
were  following  the  traditions  of  religion  from  the 
time  of  the  early  Christian  church.  Among  this 
class  of  domestic  philanthropists,  Mrs.  Sarah 
Platt  Doremus,  though  inconspicuous  in  her  own 
day,  was,  perhaps,  the  most  typical.  Born  of  a 
family  noted  for  its  piety,  wealth,  and  charitable- 
ness, she  was  early  married  to  a  man  of  similar 
social  station,  and  became  the  mother  of  nine 
children.  Her  private  benefactions  were  count- 
less; and,  in  addition,  she  founded  several 


208    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

charitable  institutions,  extended  perpetual  hospi- 
tality to  impecunious  missionaries  of  every  sect, 
and  was  constantly  serving  on  boards  and  com- 
mittees. We  are  assured  that,  in  spite  of  these 
incessant  and  varied  activities,  "  nothing  was  ever 
allowed  to  interfere  with  her  home  life."  Al- 
though she  attained  a  place  among  famous 
women  by  her  benevolence,  her  biographer  is  at 
great  pains  to  describe  in  detail  her  feminine 
charm  and  housewifely  accomplishments: 

"  All  her  labors  for  suffering  humanity  were  so  un- 
ostentatiously performed  that  much  was  not  known  until 
after  her  death.  No  outside  duty  was  undertaken  until 
the  claims  of  her  household  were  minutely  discharged. 
From  her  youth  she  was  a  notable  housewife,  and  her 
delicacies  for  the  sick  were  among  the  crowning  achieve- 
ments of  her  education.  She  was  skilled  in  all  the  ac- 
complishments of  the  day,  and  her  paintings  and  em- 
broideries were  preserved  as  evidences  of  her  versatile 
talents.  To  the  last  day  of  her  life  she  was  to  be  seen 
making  dainty  fabrics  with  the  dexterity  and  rapidity  of 
the  young. 

"  Her  beauty  was  retained  to  old  age,  and  her  clear, 
cameo-cut  features,  her  delicate  complexion,  with  its  soft 
color,  and  deep  blue  eyes,  gave  her  a  passport  to  all  hearts. 

"  Her  power  to  organize  undertakings,  broad  and  far- 
reaching,  was  only  equaled  by  her  execution  of  the 
minutest  details  .  .  .  especially  with  a  delicacy  of  health 
which  might  have  precluded  all  service.  The  secret  of  her 
success  in  every  department  of  work  was  her  entire  con- 
secration to  the  Lord's  service." 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    209 

It  is  certainly  not  surprising  that,  in  her  case, 
as  in  that  of  almost  every  married  woman  in  the 
first  half  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  all  this  was 
accomplished  with  the  accompaniment,  if  not  the 
result,  of  ill-health.  It  is,  in  truth,  incredible  that 
any  woman  should  have  borne  nine  children,  per- 
formed every  conventional  feminine  duty,  prac- 
tised the  most  exacting  accomplishments,  exer- 
cised unlimited  hospitality,  and  still  have  had  time 
left  in  which  to  be  chairman  of  committees  and 
founder  of  half  a  dozen  societies,  and  as  many 
more  institutions.  Beside  such  a  record,  the 
activities  of  the  modern  clubwoman  and  charity 
worker  seem  inconsiderable. 

Mrs.  Doremus  was,  indeed,  one  of  a  type  soon 
to  pass  away,  for  she  represented  the  very  limit 
to  which  the  domestic  woman  of  exceptional  abil- 
ity could  go  without  breaking  through  the  ap- 
pointed sphere.  When  women  began  to  reform 
charitable  institutions,  besieging  legislators  on 
behalf  of  the  neglected  insane  and  town  poor,  and 
invading  prisons  to  expose  their  horrors,  they 
were  regarded  as  going  quite  beyond  the  conven- 
tions of  almsgiving.  To  understand  the  repug- 
nance which  their  aggressive  ideas  aroused,  we 
must  see  them  with  men's  eyes,  in  perspective 
with  the  social  conditions  of  the  period.  Men 
might  themselves  attempt  to  reform  a  society  in 
which  they  had  always  been  leaders  and  dictators, 


210    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

and  they  could  accept  without  injury  to  their 
pride  the  proposals  of  other  men;  but  when 
women  presumed  to  criticise  and,  moreover,  to 
overturn  by  public  agitation,  that  which  had  been 
established  and  called  good,  the  proceeding  was 
held  to  be  almost  as  outrageous  as  the  demand 
for  equal  rights. 

When  Dorothea  Dix,  a  school-teacher  of  ex- 
ceptional culture,  visited,  in  1843,  every  alms- 
house  and  jail  in  Massachusetts,  and  appealed  to 
the  Legislature  for  the  reform  of  their  horrible 
conditions,  she  was  doing  as  unfeminine  a  thing 
as  Susan  B.  Anthony,  when  she  attempted  to  vote 
in  the  face  of  threatened  arrest. 

"  She  then  went  from  state  to  state,  in  a  time  when 
traveling  was  difficult  and  tedious,  ignoring  fatigue  and  a 
system  actually  saturated  with  malaria,  until  she  saw 
twenty  asylums  in  twenty  states  under  proper  manage- 
ment. In  less  than  four  years  she  traveled  ten  thousand 
miles,  visited  eighteen  penitentiaries,  three  hundred  county 
jails  and  houses  of  correction,  and  more  than  five  hun- 
dred almshouses,  besides  hospitals  and  houses  of  refuge. 
No  place  was  too  horrible,  no  spectacle  too  sickening,  to 
damp  her  enthusiasm  or  to  hold  back  this  delicate  and 
refined  woman  from  her  self-appointed  task." 

From  America  she  went  to  foreign  countries 
to  revolutionize  there  the  methods  of  charitable 
institutions;  and  rounded  out  her  long  life  of 
social  service  with  work  in  the  hospitals  during 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    211 

the  Civil  War.  Because  we  now  venerate  such 
women  as  Miss  Dix  it  is  the  more  difficult  to 
realize  the  criticism  which  their  rare  and  un- 
precedented behavior  created.  She  definitely 
smashed  the  theory  that  a  single  woman  had  no 
duty  outside  the  home,  accomplishing,  in  spite  of 
opposition  and  limited  physical  strength,  tasks  of 
which  men  might  be  proud. 

Long  before  the  War,  there  had  been  other 
women  liberated  here  and  there  to  social  service 
through  their  characteristic  feminine  sympathies. 
While  some  were  laying  down  their  lives  to  help 
heathen  women  and  children,  others  found  their 
election  at  home  in  teaching  negroes.  Before  the 
suffragists  were  mobbed  and  hooted  in  the  streets 
of  Eastern  towns,  Prudence  Crandall  was  ar- 
rested, imprisoned,  convicted,  boycotted,  and  in- 
humanly persecuted  in  a  town  in  Connecticut,  for 
carrying  on  a  school  for  colored  girls.  While 
Clara  Barton  was  giving  herself  to  the  work  of 
the  Sanitary  Commission,  and  conceiving  the 
great  idea  which  was  to  make  the  Red  Cross 
a  symbol  of  worldwide  humanity,  Josephine 
Griffing  was  devoting  herself  and  her  property  to 
the  relief  of  the  thousands  of  homeless  negroes 
that  were  pouring  into  the  City  of  Washington. 
When  the  War  was  over,  it  was  her  plan  for 
the  Freedmen's  Bureau  that  was  adopted  by  the 
Government.  From  Margaret  Gaffney,  the  un- 


212   THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

educated  daughter  of  an  Irish  immigrant,  who, 
childless  and  widowed,  founded  orphan  asylums 
in  New  Orleans  with  the  profits  of  her  dairy  and 
bakery,  to  Josephine  Shaw  Lowell,  the  well-born 
and  well-educated  young  girl  bereft  of  her  hus- 
band by  the  Civil  contest,  who  gave  her  whole 
life  to  the  charities  of  New  York  State,  and  left 
an  indelible  mark  on  the  philanthropies  of  her 
generation — women  of  every  class  felt  the  breath 
of  a  spirit  which  compelled  them  to  do  strange, 
new  things  in  spite  of  their  domestic  traditions. 
In  all  that  dignifies  human  nature,  they  sur- 
passed their  sex.  Some  carried  themselves 
against  criticism  with  the  courage  of  the  well- 
born among  canaille;  some  with  the  inspired 
fanaticism  of  religion;  breaking  through  the 
prejudices  of  a  complacent  society  in  the  service 
of  unpopular  causes,  defying  ostracism,  ignor- 
ing weakness  of  body  and  physical  hardships, 
sacrificing  the  thing  dearest  to  woman — her  repu- 
tation for  womanliness — in  devotion  to  the  larger 
human  need.  By  their  deeds  and  their  social 
martyrdom  they  justified  their  commission  as 
"  moral  agents."  As  the  numbers  of  such  phil- 
anthropic women  increased  toward  the  end  of 
the  century,  it  might  almost  seem  that  here  was 
their  destined  field  of  work  outside  the  home. 
Certainly  they  contributed  to  humanitarian  enter- 
prises a  quality  of  devotion  and  sacrifice  not  often 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    213 

seen  before;  blindly  imposing  upon  them  the 
standards  of  the  pious,  domestic  circle  with  a 
singlemindedness  born  of  ignorance  and  con- 
secration. 

While  thousands  of  Christian  women  were 
dedicating  themselves  to  foreign  missions,  carry- 
ing on  temperance  crusades  and  entering  innumer- 
able fields  of  philanthropy — thus  more  or  less  un- 
consciously enlarging  their  sphere — one  woman 
alone  was  destined  to  leave  an  ineffaceable  mark 
on  the  Christian  religion.  The  life  of  Mary 
Baker  Eddy  covered  more  than  three-quarters  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century;  and  at  her  death,  in 
1910,  she  was  acknowledged,  even  by  those  who 
were  not  followers  of  her  faith,  to  be  the  most 
remarkable  woman  of  her  time.  Only  the  brief- 
est resume  of  her  career  is  required  to  show  that 
that  opinion  was  well  founded. 

Mary  Baker  was  born  in  1821,  of  plain  New 
England  parents,  and  brought  up  in  the  stern 
religious  beliefs  of  that  period.  She  was  always 
a  delicate  child,  but  she  seems  to  have  been  some- 
what better  educated  than  most  girls  of  her  time. 
She  married,  and  bore  one  child,  and  was  not 
unlike  other  women,  except,  perhaps,  in  being 
less  strong  and  less  happily  situated.  At  forty 
years  of  age  she  seemed  a  confirmed  invalid.  At 
forty-six — an  age  when  most  women  have  fin- 
ished all  the  constructive  work  of  their  lives — 


2i4   THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

she  passed  through  mental  experiences  which  led 
to  the  foundation  of  the  system  now  known  as 
Christian  Science.  Yet  another  decade  of  life 
was  passed  in  "  finding  herself,"  and  in  teaching 
and  writing.  Her  best-known  book,  Science  and 
Health,  with  Key  to  the  Scriptures,  was  not  pub- 
lished till  1875,  but  has  now  gone  through  some 
hundreds  of  editions  of  one  thousand  copies  each. 
The  First  Church  of  Christ,  Scientist,  was  not  or- 
ganized till  1879;  yet,  at  the  time  of  her  death, 
there  were  nearly  one  thousand  churches  of  this 
sect,  which  claims  a  million  adherents  through- 
out the  world.  "  No  other  faith  ...  as  far  as 
human  annals  go,  has  risen  and  extended  so  rap- 
idly, so  quietly,  so  persistently." 

It  has  been  truthfully  said  that  Mrs.  Eddy 
built  up  a  career  "  out  of  nothing  that  is  phys- 
ical, no  great  fortune,  no  industrial  invention,  no 
inherited  opportunity."  Her  achievements  were 
based,  rather,  upon  a  recognition  of  "  God  as 
Divine  Principle,  and  the  consequent  allness  of 
good  and  unreality  of  evil."  Although  neither 
of  these  ideas — the  non-reality  of  matter  and  the 
influence  of  mind  over  matter — was  new,  she 
gave  them  new  vitality  by  interpreting  both  the 
Hebrew  and  the  Christian  Scriptures  in  their 
light.  The  doctrines  of  Christian  Science,  like 
those  of  older  sects,  were  dependent  upon  a  lit- 
eral acceptance  of  the  Bible;  but  Mrs.  Eddy 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN   215 

transferred  the  emphasis  from  the  passages  of 
wrath  and  painful  prohibition  to  those  of  faith 
and  cheerful  assurance. 

Christian  Science  was  one,  and  perhaps  the 
most  conspicuous,  of  the  reactions  against  Puri- 
tanism on  the  one  hand;  and,  on  the  other,  against 
materialism  and  the  negations  of  physical  science. 
In  both  aspects  it  met  the  spiritual  needs  of  men 
as  well  as  of  women,  and  therefore  reacted  upon 
other  Christian  denominations  to  humanize  and 
revivify  the  Gospel  message.  Aside  from  this  ef- 
fect, it  was  also  destined  to  alter  the  attitude  of 
Christian  thinking  toward  women.  Repeatedly 
in  the  preceding  chapters  of  this  book,  it  has 
been  pointed  out  how  an  excessively  masculine 
interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  con- 
servatism of  the  clergy  together  reinforced 
primitive  social  habits  to  keep  women  in  sub- 
ordination. But  Mrs.  Eddy  interpreted  the 
Scriptures  wholly  without  reference  to  sex.  Nor 
does  Science  and  Health  contain  any  peculiar 
earmarks  of  feminine  authorship — not  even  in 
the  chapter  on  Marriage — unless  it  be  in  the  em- 
phasis upon  the  reciprocal  and  equal  duties  of 
husband  and  wife. 

Mrs.  Eddy's  chief  contribution  to  humane  re- 
ligion lay  probably  in  the  negation  of  fear.  For 
many  generations  the  teachers  of  Christianity 
had  been  dwelling  upon  the  wrath  of  God,  the 


216    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

terrors  of  Satanic  evil,  and  the  punishments  of 
hell ;  to  the  neglect  of  those  large  and  tender 
mercies  which  Jesus  himself  had  chiefly  preached. 
Suffering  was  believed  to  be  necessary,  inevitable, 
sent  by  God  for  the  chastening  of  the  wicked 
human  soul;  poverty  and  sickness  were  ir- 
remediable and  "  Providential."  To  all  this  the 
doctrine  of  Christian  Science  was  flatly  opposed. 
One  of  its  basic  propositions  was  declared  to  be 
true,  whether  read  forward  or  backward:  "  Life, 
God,  omnipotent  good,  deny  death,  evil,  sin,  dis- 
ease— Disease,  sin,  evil,  death,  deny  good  om- 
nipotent, God,  Life." 

Such  a  doctrine  of  cheerfulness  came  as  a 
revelation  of  divine  goodness  to  overburdened, 
neurasthenic,  fearful,  hyper-sensitive  people;  and 
whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  system  of  thera- 
peutics taught  by  Mrs.  Eddy,  the  insistence  upon 
a  humaner  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  has 
been  an  incalculable  benefit  to  mankind. 

In  her  own  personality,  Mary  Baker  Eddy 
illustrated  in  a  high  degree  the  very  qualities  in 
which  the  average  woman  of  the  past  century  was 
lacking:  her  indomitable  will,  her  serene  assur- 
ance and  belief  in  her  own  message;  her  genius 
for  large  organization,  and  her  power  to  hold 
the  allegiance  of  men  and  women  alike,  were 
absolutely  "  unfeminine,"  judged  by  the  stand- 
ards of  her  time.  Her  career  was,  indeed,  a 


THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN    217 

signal  example  of  the  sexlessness  of  great  gifts. 
In  no  respect  was  she  more  exceptional  than  in 
the  courage  with  which  she  endured  ridicule  and 
opposition: 

"  For  more  than  half  a  century,  the  most  powerful 
oppositions  and  antagonisms  beat  around  her.  For  years 
.  .  .  she  was  the  target  for  ridicule,  abuse,  slander,  and 
calumny.  Conventional  religion  and  organized  medicine 
vied  with  each  other  in  attacking  her  theory,  ridiculing  her 
position,  and  impugning  her  motives.  Foes  arose  within 
her  own  household.  .  .  .  This  persistent,  tireless,  and 
many-sided  opposition  would  have  crushed  any  one  not 
sustained  by  invincible  living  faith." 

It  is  not  the  province  of  a  non-adherent,  nor 
the  purpose  of  this  sketch,  to  estimate  the 
ultimate  religious  significance  of  Mrs.  Eddy's 
teachings;  but,  from  a  purely  worldly  standpoint, 
she  rises  unchallenged — an  exception  to  all 
criteria  of  feminine  capacity.  Even  if  the  cult  of 
Christian  Science  should  ultimately  decline,  as 
many  others  have  done,  the  sheer  indomitable 
dignity  and  power  of  the  woman  herself  will  re- 
main to  suggest  what  may  be  possible  to  any 
woman.  While  all  the  other  sects  were  clinging 
to  masculine  interpretations,  a  woman  of  limited 
training,  under  the  handicap  of  physical  weak- 
ness, and  quite  without  appeal  to  any  personal 
charm,  founded  a  new,  prosperous,  and  humane 
denomination;  and  this  not  among  the  ignorant, 


2i 8    THE  ELECT  AMONG  WOMEN 

but  among  a  highly  intelligent  class  of  people. 
While  tradition  was  still  reiterating  the  necessary 
inferiority  of  the  female  sex,  women  like  Mrs. 
Eddy  and  Dorothea  Dix,  and  many  another 
whose  name  is  scarcely  remembered  now,  were 
attacking  men's  problems  with  a  grasp  of  in- 
tellect, a  fertility  of  resource,  and  an  indomitable 
force  of  will  such  as  go  to  make  a  great  states- 
man or  a  great  commander.  But  if  they  had 
done  no  more  than  prepare  the  world  to  follow 
the  social  leadership  of  Jane  Addams;  or  even  if 
they  had  been  no  more  than  moving  illustrations 
of  the  need  under  which  all  women  labored  for 
lack  of  opportunity  and  training,  they  would  have 
served  their  kind  and  time.  By  so  much  as  they 
rose  above  their  weakness  and  their  limitations, 
finding  courage  for  rare  deeds,  they  helped  to 
liberate  all  other  women  from  paralyzing  con- 
ventions. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED 
LADY 

"  Women  are  free  to  adorn  their  persons,  but  if  they  seek  to 
cultivate  their  minds,  it  is  treason  against  the  prerogative  of 
man." — SARAH  JOSEPHINE  HALE,  1868. 

"Let  the  woman  learn  in  silence  with  all  subjection.  But  I 
suffer  not  a  woman  to  teach,  nor  to  usurp  authority  over  the 
man,  but  to  be  in  silence.  For  Adam  was  first  formed,  then  Eve. 
And  Adam  was  not  deceived,  but  the  woman  being  deceived  was 
in  the  transgression." — Epistle  of  Paul  to  Timothy. 

NOTHING  is  more  unaccountable  in  the  attitude 
of  Nineteenth-Century  society  toward  women 
than  its  unreasoning  fear  of  the  effect  of  freedom 
and  education  upon  their  natures.  As  the  dif- 
fusion of  knowledge  had  been  resisted  in  preced- 
ing centuries  lest  it  should  corrupt  the  common 
man  and  undermine  the  accepted  forms  of 
dogma,  so  in  our  own  country  there  was  set  up  a 
sort  of  straw-woman — the  learned  female — an 
unsexed,  monstrous  perversion  of  the  traditional 
model  of  femininity.  Women's  rights  and  anti- 
slavery  in  the  United  States  were,  indeed,  merely 
later  phases  of  those  class  and  race  struggles 
which  had  agitated  civilized  Europe.  One  his- 

219 


220  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

torian  illustrates  the  modern  apprehension  by 
the  tale  of  Saint  Avila,  who  was  said  to  have 
gained  renown  by  a  marvel  of  self-control.  Once 
when  frying  fish  in  a  convent  she  was  seized  with 
religious  ecstasy,  but  she  did  not  drop  the  grid- 
iron, nor  let  the  fish  burn.  At  the  beginning  of 
the  last  century  most  men,  even  men  of  intel- 
ligence and  generosity,  were  convinced  that  an 
educated  woman  would  drop  her  gridiron. 

In  1819,  when  Emma  Willard  petitioned  the 
New  York  Legislature  to  endow  institutions  for 
girls  equal  to  those  already  established  for  boys, 
her  greatest  fear  was  that  "  the  phantom  of  the 
college-learned  lady  would  rise  up  to  destroy 
every  good  resolution  in  her  favor."  Some  men 
thought  women  so  inferior  to  men  mentally  as  to 
be  quite  incapable  of  reasoning;  others,  though 
granting  a  degree  of  capacity,  were  sure  that 
higher  thinking  was  wholly  incompatible  with  the 
domestic  and  family  duties  for  which  God  and 
Nature  had  designed  them.  These  two  theories 
—really  inconsistent  with  each  other — which 
were  traceable  partly  to  a  military  society,  in 
which  women  and  non-combatants  had  always 
been  held  in  contempt;  and  partly  to  the  degen- 
eracy and  sentimentalism  of  Eighteenth-Century 
England,  had  become  the  ruling  traditions  of  the 
American  Colonies.  Not  until  the  political  and 
social  revolutions  of  the  end  of  that  period  had 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  221 

definitely  broken  the  ties  between  the  old  and 
new  society  were  they  likely  to  be  questioned. 
Education  is  necessarily  an  art  of  peace,  and  not 
until  the  American  states  had  entered  upon  an 
era  of  nationalism  was  there  leisure  for  its  pro- 
motion. 

Aside  from  the  prevalent  tradition  of  women's 
inferiority,  other  social  influences  delayed  the 
provision  of  educational  privileges  for  girls. 
Learning  had  always  been  associated  with  the 
idea  of  aristocracy,  and  was  certainly  not  to  be 
offered  to  women  while  still  denied  to  ordinary 
men.  In  the  Colonies  the  chief  motive  for  the 
education  of  a  select  class  of  men  had  been  to 
provide  a  learned  ministry  capable  of  interpret- 
ing the  Scriptures.  Both  the  Pauline  and  the 
Puritan  interpretation  taught  the  subjection  of 
women,  and  the  current  secular  philosophy  of 
the  time  corroborated  it.  Rousseau's  dictum — 
"  She  is  to  know  but  little  and  the  little  she  knows 
is  to  be  pleasing  to  man  " — was  as  acceptable  to 
free-thinkers  as  the  theory  that  her  subordina- 
tion was  "  ordained  by  God  "  would  naturally 
be  to  an  always  conservative  clergy. 

The  safety  of  a  democratic  nation  must  lie  in 
diffusion  of  intelligence — but  this  commonplace 
of  our  day  was  not  at  once  recognized  by  the 
states  as  an  inevitable  consequence  of  their  ideal 
phrase,  "  Life,  Liberty,  and  the  Pursuit  of  Hap- 


222  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

piness."  Even  when  the  movement  for  public 
schools  began  to  gather  headway,  English  tradi- 
tions still  pervaded  them  to  the  exclusion  of  girls ; 
and  when,  here  and  there,  it  was  realized  that 
girls  required  something  more  than  desultory 
home  training,  their  schooling  was  often  fearfully 
and  grudgingly  granted.  Throughout  the  cen- 
tury, as  grammar  and  high  schools,  academies 
and  seminaries,  semi-colleges  and  full-grown  col- 
leges, and  at  last  true  universities  were  founded, 
the  sharing  of  such  opportunities  by  girls  and 
women  was  steadily  resisted.  Even  when  that 
resistance  was  gradually  broken  down,  girls  were 
often  prevented  from  making  use  of  them  by  the 
general  opinion  which  still  prevailed,  that  women 
did  not  need  for  domestic  purposes  an  education 
as  thorough  or  as  extensive  as  that  of  men.  When 
girls,  in  process  of  time,  came  to  be  taught  at 
all,  it  was  not  simultaneously  with  boys,  but 
during  vacations,  before  and  after  the  regular 
hours  of  sessions,  by  inferior  and  overworked 
teachers,  and  with  a  limited  range  of  studies. 
Although  constantly  gaining  opportunities  for 
higher  study,  they  were  yet,  at  the  very  end  of 
the  so-called  "  woman's  century,"  weighted  with 
limiting  conditions. 

While  the  active  resistance  to  the  equal  ad- 
mission of  girls  to  educational  privileges  was 
made  by  the  men  who  controlled  taxation,  endow- 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  223 

ments,  and  school  equipment,  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that  a  far  more  subtle  and  effective  check 
lay  in  the  tradition  current  among  women  them- 
selves, that  intellectual  attainments  in  their  sex 
were  both  improper  and  unattractive.  The  same 
elusive  and  belated  convention,  which  still  pre- 
vents the  general  adoption  by  women  of  bifur- 
cated garments,  prevented  them  earlier  from  tak- 
ing advantage  of  the  higher  education.  Women 
who  had  themselves  attained  a  degree  of  cul- 
ture were  often  doubtful  of  its  usefulness  to  their 
sex  generally.  The  accomplished  Mrs.  Barbauld 
thought  young  ladies  ought  only  to  have  "  such  a 
general  tincture  of  knowledge  as  to  make  them 
agreeable  companions  to  a  man  of  sense,  and 
ought  to  gain  these  accomplishments  in  a  more 
quiet  and  unobserved  manner,  from  intercourse 
and  conversation  at  home,  with  father,  brother, 
or  friend."  If  women  at  this  time  ever  con- 
sciously reasoned  out  their  situation,  the  logic 
must  have  run  something  like  this:  It  is  the  busi- 
ness of  women  to  please  and  to  serve  men — 
men  do  not  like  women  to  know  as  much  as  them- 
selves, nor  does  a  servant  need  education.  Since 
learning  adds  nothing  to  our  attractiveness,  let  us 
not  appear  intellectual,  even  though  we  may  have 
inadvertently  acquired  a  little  knowledge. 

The    legacy    of    advice    left    by    Dr.    John 
Gregory  to  his  daughters  in  1774,  was  still  quite 


224  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

appropriate  in  the  middle  of  the  following  cen- 
tury: 

"  Be  even  cautious  in  displaying  your  good  sense.  But 
if  you  happen  to  have  any  learning,  keep  it  a  profound 
secret,  especially  from  men,  who  generally  look  with  a 
jealous  and  malignant  eye  on  a  woman  of  great  parts 
and  a  cultivated  understanding." 

In  an  old  Ladies'  Magazine  of  the  ante-bellum 
type,  advice  of  precisely  the  same  tenor  is  given: 

"  She  ought  to  present  herself  as  a  being  made  to 
please,  to  love,  and  to  seek  support;  a  being  inferior  to 
man  and  near  to  Angels." 

It  was,  indeed,  almost  as  improper  a  century 
ago  for  a  lady  publicly  to  display  an  intellectual 
interest  as  it  would  now  be  for  her  to  attend  a 
prize-fight  or  drink  at  the  hotel  bar.  Until  after 
1830  women  were  not  expected  to  attend  any 
public  lecture  except  those  of  a  religious  char- 
acter, nor  to  avail  themselves  of  public  collections 
of  books  and  pictures.  The  shy  and  eager- 
minded  Hannah  Adams,  "  who  learned  Greek 
and  Latin  from  some  theological  students  board- 
ing in  her  father's  house,  and  who  had  written 
books,"  was  the  first  woman  to  scandalize  Boston 
by  making  use  of  the  Public  Library. 

Without  rehearsing  in  detail  the  formal  steps 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  225 

in  the  growth  of  education  for  girls,  it  is  amusing 
to  recall  what  was  considered  desirable  for  a 
young  woman  to  know  before  the  days  of  public 
schools  and  seminaries.  One  of  the  most  cul- 
tivated women  of  her  time,  Abigail  Adams,  the 
wife  of  the  President,  said  in  her  old  age: 

"  The  only  chance  for  much  intellectual  improvement 
in  the  female  sex  was  to  be  found  in  the  families  of  the 
educated  class,  and  in  occasional  intercourse  with  the 
learned  of  the  day.  Whatever  of  useful  instruction  was 
received  in  the  practical  conduct  of  life  came  from 
maternal  lips;  and  what  of  farther  mental  development, 
depended  more  upon  the  eagerness  with  which  the  casual 
teachings  of  daily  conversation  were  treasured  up,  than 
upon  any  labor  expended  purposely  to  promote  it.  Fe- 
male education  in  the  best  families  went  no  further  than 
writing  and  arithmetic,  and  in  some  few  and  rare  in- 
stances, music  and  dancing." 

A  quarter  of  a  century  later  girls  were  still 
not  generally  admitted  to  the  public  schools,  and 
the  education  thought  necessary  for  them  con- 
sisted of  reading,  writing,  spelling,  the  first  rule 
of  arithmetic — addition — good  manners,  needle- 
work, and  knitting.  To  this  the  best  educated 
girls  added  no  more  than  music,  grammar  and 
rhetoric,  and  geography.  Even  fifty  years  later 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  complained: 

"  When  you  hear  of  a  young  lady  as  '  splendidly  edu- 
cated '  it  commonly  turns  out  that  she  speaks  several 


226  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

languages  admirably,  and  plays  on  the  piano  well,  or 
sketches  well.  It  is  not  needful  for  such  an  indorse- 
ment that  she  should  have  the  slightest  knowledge  of 
mathematics,  of  logic,  of  rhetoric,  of  metaphysics,  of 
political  economy,  of  physiology,  of  any  branch  of  natural 
science,  or  of  any  language  or  literature  or  history  ex- 
cept those  of  modern  Europe." 

The  progress  of  education  for  girls  was 
further  checked  by  the  deference  which  local 
communities  paid  to  the  opinions  of  the  ministers 
of  their  churches.  They  continually  emphasized 
the  idea  that  the  mission  of  women  in  the  world 
was  exclusively  moral,  not  intellectual,  and  that 
the  possession  and  pursuit  of  worldly  knowledge 
was  incompatible  with  the  higher  womanly 
destiny.  Their  line  of  reasoning  was  carefully 
presented  in  the  preface  to  the  Woman's  Record, 
a  biographical  compilation  published  soon  after 
the  close  of  the  Civil  War.  The  author,  after 
disclaiming  all  sympathy  with  the  woman's  rights 
movement,  assures  her  readers  that  the  book  is 
not  designed  to  assert  any  intellectual  equality 
with  man,  but  to  demonstrate  her  distinctively 
moral  mission  by  means  of  historical  examples: 

"  I  believe  and  I  trust  I  shall  make  it  apparent,  that 
woman  is  God's  appointed  agent  of  morality,  the  teacher 
and  the  inspirer  of  those  sentiments  and  feelings  which 
are  termed  the  virtues  of  humanity ;  and  that  the  progress 
of  these  virtues  and  the  permanent  improvement  of  our 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  227 

race,  depend  upon  the  manner  in  which  her  mission  is 
treated  by  man.  .  .  .  Man  by  the  fall  was  rendered  in- 
capable of  cultivating  by  his  own  unassisted  efforts,  any 
good  propensity  or  quality  of  his  nature.  Left  to  him- 
self his  love  becomes  lust;  patriotism,  policy;  and  religion, 
idolatry.  He  is  naturally  selfish  in  his  affections  .  .  .  but 
woman  was  not  thus  cast  down.  To  her  was  confided,  by 
the  Creator's  express  declaration,  the  mission  of  disinter- 
ested affection ;  her  '  desire  '  was  to  be  to  her  husband — 
not  to  herself.  .  .  .  Truly  she  was  made  '  for  man  '  .  .  . 
she  was  not  made  to  gratify  his  sensual  desires,  but  to  refine 
his  human  affections,  and  to  elevate  his  moral  feelings 
.  .  .  and  her  soul  was  to  help  him  where  he  was  deficient 
— namely,  in  his  spiritual  nature." 

This  "  covert  glory  of  the  womanly  nature,"  as 
the  Reverend  Horace  Bushnell  called  it,  was  to  be 
the  compensation  of  women  for  mental  inferi- 
ority and  for  the  denial  of  freedom  and  oppor- 
tunity. 

But  in  this,  as  in  many  other  instances  in  his- 
tory, while  the  most  plausible  arguments  were 
being  invented  to  prevent  the  admission  of  an- 
other class  to  an  equal  opportunity,  social  and 
economic  forces  were  steadily  undermining  the 
accepted  tradition.  As  the  public-school  system 
expanded  under  the  impetus  of  national  pros- 
perity, the  demand  for  teachers  could  not  be  sup- 
plied from  the  ranks  of  pioneer  young  men,  who 
saw  a  thousand  better  openings.  The  religious 
awakening,  which  found  expression  in  foreign 


228  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

and  home  missionary  enterprises,  could  not  be 
carried  on  without  the  aid  of  the  missionary  wife, 
who  must  add,  to  housewifely  and  motherly  cares, 
the  duties  of  teacher,  nurse,  and  exemplar  to 
heathen  women  and  children.  Even  temperance 
leaders  were  compelled  to  call  in  the  assistance  of 
female  organizers  and  financiers.  Then  sud- 
denly it  was  perceived  that  the  demand  for 
women  of  some  education  in  social  work  outside 
the  home  was  increasing  faster  than  their  educa- 
tional opportunities.  And  at  the  same  time  it 
began  to  be  realized  that,  even  for  a  purely 
moral  career,  women  needed  something  more  by 
way  of  training  than  ethical  platitudes  deduced 
from  distorted  Scripture  lessons. 

The  demand  for  better  educated  teachers 
found  response  in  the  establishment  of  Normal 
schools  and  in  the  general  admission  of  girls 
to  high  schools,  to  Oberlin  Collegiate  Institute, 
and  to  the  small  denominational  schools — called 
colleges — founded  chiefly  by  the  highly  demo- 
cratic sect  of  the  Methodists.  While  the  pio- 
neers of  the  Middle  West  were  thus  preparing 
the  way  for  the  acceptance  of  co-education  in  the 
state  colleges  which  arose  after  the  Civil  War, 
Emma  Willard  and  Mary  Lyon  were  struggling 
to  provide  girls  with  an  education  approaching 
that  open  to  boys,  but  free  from  the  dangers  of 
defeminization.  The  Troy  Female  Seminary 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  229 

laid  especial  emphasis  on  "  domestic  instruc- 
tions "  adapted  to  the  softer  sex;  and  it  was 
pointed  out  that  women,  if  given  a  proper  train- 
ing, could  teach  children  better  and  cheaper  than 
men,  thus  releasing  them  to  pursue  "  the  thou- 
sand occupations  from  which  women  are  neces- 
sarily debarred."  Mt.  Holyoke  Seminary,  more 
than  any  other  school,  expressed  the  passion  for 
knowledge  and  for  the  conversion  of  the  souls 
of  mankind  of  which  its  founder,  Mary  Lyon, 
was  possessed.  When  the  General  Association 
of  Congregational  Ministers  of  Massachusetts 
refused  to  indorse  her  plan  for  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  girls,  her  clerical  friends  advised  her  to 
see  in  the  rejection  "The  hand  of  the  Lord;" 
but  Mary  Lyon  replied: 

"  I  may  be  fifty  years  in  advance  of  the  age,  but  the 
work  is  of  God  and  must  surely  go  on." 

In  all  the  increasing  provisions  for  the  educa- 
tion of  girls  there  was  as  yet  no  hint  of  courses 
identical  with  those  offered  to  young  men.  The 
studies  required  of  girls,  though  sometimes  nom- 
inally equal,  were  neither  so  severe  nor  so  re- 
spected as  the  classical  trilogy.  Even  in  co- 
educational institutions,  "  female  "  courses  and 
"  ladies'  '  courses  were  substituted  for  the 
straight  classical  requirements,  and  often  meas- 


230  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

ured  by  inferior  standards.  The  War,  in  this  as 
in  every  phase  of  national  life,  made  an  abrupt 
cleavage  in  the  lives  of  women.  They  came 
across  it  with  minds  broadened  by  nursing  ex- 
perience, and  by  the  economic  necessity  they  were 
under  of  replacing  men  in  industry.  Whereas  all 
forms  of  culture  had  hitherto  been  emasculated 
to  fit  women,  they  now  began  to  demand  for 
themselves  truly  equal  opportunities.  With  the 
foundation  of  the  state  colleges  under  the  Mor- 
rill  Act  of  1862,  and  of  the  separate  woman's 
colleges,  there  was  definitely  precipitated  a 
struggle  to  make  the  standards  of  women's  edu- 
cation not  only  equal  to  but  identical  with  those 
of  men's  institutions.  At  the  same  time,  and  in- 
terwoven with  it,  arose  a  conflict  of  social  ideals 
between  co-education  and  segregate  instruction, 
in  which  the  phantom  of  the  intellectual  woman 
returned  to  terrorize  anew  the  believers  in  strict 
feminine  tradition.  The  sarcasm  and  hostility 
endured  by  Mary  Lyon  and  the  ridicule  suffered 
by  Mrs.  Willard  and  other  pioneers  in  the  sem- 
inary movement,  were  as  nothing  when  compared 
with  the  scorn  and  violence  aroused  by  the  at- 
tempt of  women  to  prove  themselves  equal  to 
men  in  the  field  of  classic  learning. 

When  the  first  few  generations  of  college 
women,  in  spite  of  many  limitations,  had  demon- 
strated their  ability  to  reach  a  higher  average 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  231 

standard  than  their  competitors,  there  was  still 
to  be  overcome  the  Giant  Dreadful  of  Physical 
Incapacity.  That  strange  old  book,  Clarke's 
Sex  in  Education,  which  proves  conclusively  that 
a  woman  is  by  virtue  of  her  feminine  functions  a 
semi-invalid  one  week  out  of  every  month,  and 
that  she  must,  therefore,  be  unfitted  for  mother- 
hood by  the  strain  of  systematic  mental  training, 
had  a  wide  approval  in  the  third  quarter  of  the 
century.  Dr.  Clarke  dwelt  at  length  on  the  ex- 
istence of  a  great  number  of  "  weak,  neural- 
gic, dyspeptic,  hysterical,  menorrhagic,  dysmen- 
orrheic "  girls  and  women,  assuming  that  the 
chief  cause  of  these  conditions  was  their  educa- 
tion by  the  same  methods  as  boys.  He  declared 
that  the  identical  education  of  the  two  sexes  was 
"  a  crime  before  God  and  humanity,  that 
physiology  protests  against  and  experience  weeps 
over  ...  it  emasculates  boys,  stunts  girls, 
makes  semi-eunuchs  of  one  sex  and  agenes  of  the 
other."  After  devoting  a  whole  chapter  to  the 
clinical  details  of  seven  cases  of  educated  women 
who  had  come  under  his  treatment  for  female 
diseases,  he  concludes: 

"  Physiology  declares  that  the  solution  of  it  will  only 
be  possible  when  the  education  of  girls  is  made  appropriate 
to  their  organization.  A  German  girl  yoked  with  a 
donkey  and  dragging  a  cart,  is  an  exhibition  of  monstrous 
muscular  and  aborted  brain  development.  An  American 


232  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

girl,  yoked  with  a  dictionary,  and  laboring  with  the  cata- 
menia,  is  an  exhibition  of  monstrous  brain  and  aborted 
ovarian  development." 


At  the  height  of  this  controversy,  it  was  cus- 
tomary for  the  college  woman  to  be  spoken  of  as 
"  hemaphrodite  in  mind,"  and  "  divested  of  her 
sex,"  and  to  predict  that  she  would  lose  not  only 
her  feminine  attractions,  but  become  incapable  of 
performing  her  essential  functions.  All  these 
predictions  were  quite  a  priori,  and  founded  on 
fears  rather  than  facts;  for  of  the  eight  colleges 
in  the  Eastern  States  which  at  this  time  admitted 
women,  only  one  had  been  open  as  long  as  four 
years,  and  of  the  separate  institutions  of  col- 
legiate rank,  Vassar  alone  had  been  in  existence 
as  much  as  seven  years.  But  the  belief  in  the 
physical  inability  of  girls  to  endure  a  regimen  of 
regular,  hard  study,  was  so  general  that  it  com- 
pelled the  promoters  of  their  education  to  disarm 
it  by  special  measures.  Wellesley  College  an- 
nounced at  its  opening  in  1875  tnat  ^  was  not 
hard  study,  but  violation  of  law,  which  injured 
young  women,  and  that  it  would  offer  oppor- 
tunities, equal  to  those  of  the  best  colleges  for 
young  men,  "  but  with  due  regard  to  health." 

Just  as  the  word  "  female  "  had  been  super- 
seded by  the  less  suggestive  term  "  woman,"  so 
the  old  ideal  of  physical  delicacy  as  an  essential 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  233 

and  desirable  feminine  characteristic  now  began 
to  be  set  aside.  A  systematic  effort  began  to  be 
made  to  develop  women  into  beings  robust 
enough  for  whatever  family  and  social  functions 
they  might  undertake.  But  even  when  it  came  to 
be  evident,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  century,  that 
college  girls  were,  on  the  whole,  healthier  than 
other  girls  of  the  same  social  station,  the  ghost 
of  that  same  unsexed  lady  that  had  haunted  us 
for  a  hundred  years  rose  again.  It  was  mourn- 
fully prophesied  that  such  learned  and  vigorous 
creatures  would  not  marry,  and  if,  perchance, 
they  did,  they  would  not  bear  children.  But 
even  this  later  Shade  had  to  vanish  when,  after 
a  full  generation,  it  was  discovered  that  many 
such  women  had  been  marrying  just  like  ordinary 
folk,  and  had  produced,  if  anything,  rather  a 
larger  proportion  of  healthy  children  than  other 
women  of  their  class. 

There  are  always  in  any  society  a  large  num- 
ber who  prefer  to  trust  what  has  been  good 
rather  than  attempt  what  might  be  better.  To 
such  people  co-education  was  a  veritable  bogie- 
woman  of  the  most  hideous  sort.  Though  it  had 
long  been  adopted  from  motives  of  economy  and 
social  convenience  in  the  Middle  and  Western 
States,  the  discussion  was  continued  by  Eastern 
educators,  who  feared  it  might  seriously  endanger 
that  fragile  veneer  of  womanhood,  the  habits  of 


234  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

femininity.  When  it  could  no  longer  be  as- 
serted that  co-education  involved  more  scandals 
than  segregation;  or — what  was  then  regarded 
as  almost  equally  scandalous — more  marriages; 
when  co-educated  girls  could  not  easily  be  distin- 
guished from  graduates  of  the  separate  colleges 
by  any  stigmata;  yet  again  a  feeble  old  Spook 
came  back  to  whisper  tormentingly,  that  schools 
and  colleges  were  being  "  feminized,"  and  young 
men  deprived  of  their  birthright,  unhampered 
masculinity,  by  the  presence  of  so  many  females. 
The  century  which  began  with  a  complete 
"  masculinization  "  of  education  ended  in  shrill 
and  ineffectual  protests  on  the  part  of  a  small 
class  of  left-over  males,  because  their  mo- 
nopoly of  opportunity  and  opinion  had  been 
broken. 

During  all  this  period  every  pioneer  woman 
who  attempted  to  enlarge  her  intellectual  horizon 
or  to  prepare  herself  for  a  profession  was  met 
with  ridicule  and  hostility.  When  reluctantly 
admitted  to  partake  of  the  crumbs  which  fell 
from  scholarly  tables,  she  knew  herself  unwel- 
come, and  was  constantly  reminded  that  her  sex 
must  forever  prevent  her  from  full  participation 
in  the  feast.  It  should  not  surprise  any  one  that 
her  attitude  was,  more  often  than  not,  an- 
tagonistic to  men.  Like  other  self-made  beings 
she  often  understood,  but  would  not  acknowledge, 


the  crudity  of  her  half-trained  powers;  and  in- 
evitably she  bore  about  her  the  marks  of  the 
hardships  through  which  she  had  come.  Where 
one  pioneer  survives  with  scars,  a  hundred  fall 
by  the  way,  and  the  hardier  survivor,  however 
strengthened  by  the  experience,  is  likely  to  be  an 
exceptional,  if  not  an  eccentric,  person. 

Among  these  early  women  graduates,  a  few 
came  out  arrogant  and  aggressive,  with  a  chip  on 
the  shoulder  and  a  conviction  that  sex  ranged 
against  sex  was  the  only  way  for  women  to  win 
an  equal  chance.  Some  who  had  not  the  fighting 
temper  carried,  nevertheless,  a  deep  sense  of 
injury  toward  men  who  thought  themselves  en- 
titled to  the  best,  and  would  not  admit  women 
willingly  to  share  it.  Others  starved  their 
womanly  natures  in  the  devotion  to  learning, 
vowing  themselves  to  a  sort  of  conventualism  in 
the  Cause  of  Woman  and  narrowing  their  out- 
look to  purely  feminine  experiences.  Those  who 
married  sometimes  dropped  back  into  the  ac- 
cepted and  limited  conventions  of  femininity,  and 
wore  an  apologetic  air  for  their  collegiate  temeri- 
ties; or,  finding  no  solution  for  their  anomalous 
position  between  the  old  and  the  new,  agreed  with 
the  alumna  who  said: 

"  To  be  intellectual  is  all  right — to  be  domestic  is  all 
right — but  to  try  to  be  both  is  hell !  " 


236  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

But  by  far  the  larger  number  came  out  whole- 
some and  unperverted  by  opposition,  and  took 
their  place  as  leaders  of  succeeding  generations. 
Though  not  less  womanly  than  their  ancestors  of 
the  domestic  regime,  they  walked  with  a  more 
serious  air,  feeling  themselves  consecrated  by 
their  own  exceptional  privilege  to  the  help  of 
their  sex.  As  the  number  of  alumna  increased 
and  opposition  declined,  their  sense  of  responsi- 
bility broadened  to  include  the  young,  the  weak, 
the  limited,  and  every  class  who,  like  themselves, 
needed  the  equal  chance.  That  feminization, 
whose  impalpable  shade  still  hovers  near,  has 
come  to  mean,  in  its  large  aspect,  the 
brooding  of  the  maternal  instinct  over  all  man- 
kind. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Emma  Willard,  in 
her  petition  to  the  New  York  Legislature  in  be- 
half of  state  endowments  for  girls'  schools,  urged 
that,  among  the  sciences  proper  to  the  sex,  "  do- 
mestic instructions  "  should  be  considered  im- 
portant; and  suggested  that  housewifery  might 
be  reduced  to  a  system  as  well  as  other  arts. 
Though  many  girls'  seminaries,  and  even  some 
of  the  women's  colleges,  at  their  foundation  re- 
quired a  certain  amount  of  domestic  labor  from 
their  students,  it  was  rather  to  economize,  and 
to  disarm  prejudice,  than  for  its  educational 
value.  It  gives  a  humorous  aspect  to  the  con- 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  237 

trov7ersy  between  the  segregate  and  the  co-educa- 
tional factions  for  the  strictly  feminine  party  to 
be  obliged  to  grant  that  the  co-educational  in- 
stitutions, which  were  opposed  because  they 
might  defeminize  young  women,  provided  the 
first  and  best  equipment  for  training  in  the  sub- 
jects related  to  housekeeping  and  the  family. 
The  tardiness  of  the  women's  colleges  to  offer 
courses  having  a  direct  application  to  the  do- 
mestic occupations  is  to  be  explained  partly  by 
the  prevalence  of  the  tradition  that  only  the 
classical  training  wras  real  education.  Only  very 
recently,  for  instance,  have  the  sciences  been  ac- 
cepted as  equal  in  disciplinary  and  cultural  value 
to  Greek  and  Latin.  The  difficulty  with  which 
the  applied  sciences  of  Agriculture  and  Engineer- 
ing were  introduced  into  the  curriculum  along- 
side of  the  classical  courses,  warned  women 
not  to  try  to  climb  up  by  any  such  disputed 
way. 

What  women  had  come  to  want  was  The  Best, 
and  The  Best  was  symbolized  by  the  classics  as 
taught  at  Harvard  and  Yale.  To  this  standard, 
therefore,  every  woman's  college  must  come  be- 
fore its  degree  would  be  accepted.  With  its  stu- 
dents prepared  in  inferior  schools,  with  limited 
resources,  and  hampered  by  the  timidity  of  its 
patrons,  it  was  all  that  such  a  college  could  do 
to  teach  the  traditional  requirements.  It  could 


238  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

not  afford  to  jeopardize  its  reputation  by  any  ex- 
periments in  coordinating  its  work  with  the 
future  lives  of  its  students. 

The  classics  were,  in  truth,  as  well  adapted  to 
the  average  girl  as  to  the  ordinary  boy,  so  far  as 
training  and  culture  were  concerned,  and  were 
scarcely  less  related  to  the  practical  needs  of  life. 
It  was  not  until  the  exclusive  domination  of  the 
curriculum  for  gentlemen  was  supplanted  by  an 
elective  system  broad  enough  to  meet  the  cultural 
and  vocational  needs  of  all  classes,  that  the  idea 
of  a  modified  curriculum  for  women  could  be 
safely  entertained. 

Although  this  is  essentially  a  man's  world — 
since  women  have  not  yet  had  time  to  contribute 
the  full  fruits  of  their  freedom  and  belated  op- 
portunity— yet  every  woman  who  reads  the  his- 
tory of  their  slow  emancipation  must  acknowl- 
edge that  the  slowness  was  due  as  much  to  the 
apathy  of  women  themselves  as  to  the  reluctance 
of  men  to  endanger  their  traditional  ideal  of 
female  purity  and  competence  by  bringing  it  in 
contact  with  their  own  strength  and  coarseness. 
Nor  should  the  modern  woman  fail  to  pay  her 
debt  of  appreciation  to  the  few  truly  liberal- 
minded  men  who  primarily  made  that  progress 
possible.  But  for  the  vision  of  Joseph  Emerson 
of  Byfield,  Massachusetts,  Mary  Lyon  would 
perhaps  not  have  set  out  on  her  mission  of  found- 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  239 

ing  a  school  where  girls  could  be  adequately  pre- 
pared to  save  the  world.  When  Sophia  Smith— 
who  had  herself  been  refused  admission  to  the 
public  schools  of  her  native  town — inherited  a 
fortune,  her  timid  desire  to  do  something  for  the 
education  of  girls  might  not  have  ended  in  the 
foundation  of  Smith  College  but  for  the  encour- 
agement of  her  pastor,  Dr.  John  M.  Green.  Co- 
education— a  method  offensive  to  Old  and  New 
England  alike — owed  its  prevalence  in  the  West 
to  the  democratic  spirit  of  the  Methodists,  and 
to  the  personal  sacrifice  and  foresight  of  in- 
dividual men. 

All  along  the  road,  women  have  been  led  and 
encouraged  by  the  exceptional  man.  That  they 
have  not  even  yet  attained  a  truly  equal  oppor- 
tunity for  self-development  is  as  much  due  to 
outworn  traditions  of  their  own  cultivation  as 
to  the  fact  that  men  who  wish  to  be  just  are  still 
in  the  minority.  It  is,  indeed,  a  curious  world 
where  mankind  dreams  always  of  perfection,  yet 
is  afraid  of  the  processes  necessary  to  attain  it; 
and  it  is  still  haunted  by  many  phantoms  like  that 
of  the  Learned  Lady  who  was  to  defeminize  her- 
self by  the  human  exercise  of  systematic  think- 
ing. A  strange  world,  indeed,  where  the  light 
from  which  all  such  shadows  flee  is  regarded 
with  terror.  Women  have  at  last,  however,  ar- 
rived at  a  stage  where  they  may  at  any  rate 


24o  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

grapple  directly  with  the  reality  of  their  own 
conventionalized  natures. 

The  results  of  women's  education  were  re- 
garded by  many,  at  the  end  of  the  century,  as  dis- 
appointing. It  was  said  that  the  trained  woman 
was  imitative  rather  than  original;  superficial,  as 
might  have  been  expected,  and  lacking  in  concen- 
tration of  effort — in  short,  the  critics  were  aston- 
ished that  women  had  not  succeeded  in  attaining 
in  three-quarters  of  a  century  what  only  the  ex- 
ceptional man  had  achieved  in  all  the  ages  of 
his  own  making.  Without  in  the  least  discredit- 
ing the  remarkable  achievements  of  individual 
women,  or  overlooking  the  altogether  higher 
level  which  women  in  the  mass  have  reached,  it 
must  be  granted  that  the  depth  and  breadth  of 
their  ideas  has  been  limited  by  the  narrowness 
of  their  experience.  Professor  Thomas  very 
justly  points  out  that  women's  attainments  have 
been  to  men's  so  far,  as  those  of  an  amateur  to  a 
professional,  because  of  their  intellectual  seques- 
tration. 

Yet  the  scholars  who  have  been  most  friendly 
to  women's  mental  advancement  have  not  com- 
prehended, apparently,  that  the  petty  traditions 
of  feminine  duty  have,  after  all,  been  the  chief 
hindrance  to  women's  intellectual  growth.  The 
male  scholar  of  the  past  century  did  not  darn, 
cook,  nurse  his  sister's  children  through  the 


PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY  241 

measles;  make  his  own  clothes  in  scanty  vaca- 
tions; play  the  church  organ,  teach  a  Sunday- 
school  class,  or  take  his  mother's  place  when  she 
fell  ill.  Nor  was  the  lack  of  money  any  serious 
difficulty  to  the  clever  young  man.  While  many 
a  young  girl  was  doing  the  work  of  a  common 
servant  in  order  to  earn  the  sixty  dollars  neces- 
sary to  pay  her  way  through  Mount  Holyoke, 
Harvard  College  was  offering  not  less  than 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  a  year  in  cash  premi- 
ums for  study;  and,  as  in  the  Chinese  family, 
mothers  and  sisters  at  home  pledged  themselves 
for  the  support  of  the  brilliant  boy,  who  was  to 
be  of  the  "  literati  "  and  reflect  honor  on  the 
household. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  Twentieth  Century  it 
was  perfectly  apparent  that  not  until  women 
ceased  to  be  the  pensioners  of  men;  not  until  they 
could  command  their  own  money  and  limit  their 
duties  in  the  household;  not  until  endowments  and 
scholarships  for  their  use  were  as  abundant  and 
as  generously  provided  as  for  men,  could  any 
considerable  body  of  women  attain  an  unques- 
tioned intellectual  status.  Nor  could  their  at- 
tainments be  justly  appraised  until  the  phantom 
of  the  learned  woman  had  vanished.  So  long  as 
men  were  reluctant  to  let  their  womenkind  take 
their  chances  in  education,  as  they  have  to  do  in 
matrimony;  so  long  as  they  wavered  between  the 


242  PHANTOM  OF  THE  LEARNED  LADY 

fear  that  young  men  will  be  inoculated  with  the 
bacillus  femimnus,  and  the  theory  that  women 
themselves  will  become  immune  to  it,  women  dis- 
trusted their  own  powers,  and  the  legitimacy  of 
their  commission.  They  have  yet  to  learn  to  be 
themselves,  and  to  follow  the  inner  vision 
wherever  it  may  lead. 


CHAPTER  XII 
WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

"  In  times  like  these  every  soul  should  do  the  work  of  a  full- 
grown  man.  When  I  pass  the  gate  of  the  Celestials  and  good 
Peter  asks  me  where  I  wish  to  sit,  I  will  say:  'Anywhere  so 
that  I  am  neither  a  negro  nor  a  woman.  Confer  on  me,  Great 
Angel,  the  glory  of  white  manhood,  so  that  henceforth  I  may 
feel  unlimited  freedom.'  " — Letter  of  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton  to 
Susan  B.  Anthony. 

"  It  was  not  because  the  three-penny  tax  on  tea  was  so  ex- 
orbitant that  our  Revolutionary  fathers  fought  and  died,  but  to 
establish  the  principle  that  such  taxation  was  unjust.  It  is  the 
same  with  this  woman's  revolution;  though  every  law  were  as 
just  to  woman  as  to  man,  the  principle  that  one  class  may 
usurp  the  power  to  legislate  for  another  is  unjust." — Letter  of 
Susan  B.  Anthony  to  her  brother. 

"  Whatever  is  morally  right  for  a  man  to  do,  is  morally  right 
for  a  woman  to  do.  I  recognize  no  rights  but  human  rights." — 
ANGELINA  GRIMKE  WELD. 

DOUBTLESS  nothing  more  surprised  the  ortho- 
doxy and  the  social  conventions  of  American 
society  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury than  the  way  in  which  a  few  hundred  women 
broke  loose,  so  to  speak;  coming  out  from  the 
domesticated  masses  to  demand  all  sorts  of  un- 
precedented rights,  to  champion  unpopular 
causes,  to  enter  activities  where  their  labors 
rather  than  their  voices  had  hitherto  been  ac- 

243 


244  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

ceptable.  And  yet  the  modern  student  of  his- 
tory sees  in  this  ebullition  simply  the  logical  con- 
sequences of  the  political  and  intellectual  ferment 
of  the  later  Eighteenth  Century,  which  left  as  its 
principal  residuum  the  doctrine  of  equal  rights 
and  opportunities  for  all  classes  of  men. 

When  once  the  doctrine  had  been  implanted  it 
was  inevitable  that  reasoning  minds  should  soon 
begin  to  ask:  Why  not  for  women,  too?  Acute 
and  just-thinking  men  could  not  but  see  the  in- 
consistencies involved  in  a  career  like  that  of 
Mercy  Warren,  whose  satirical  poems  and 
dramas  were  of  as  great  service  to  the  revolu- 
tionary cause  as  that  contributed  by  many  a 
fighting  man;  but  whose  status  remained  that  of 
an  inferior  and  childish  being: 

"  Noble  and  understanding  as  this  lady  of  '76  was  in 
fact,  and  recognized  by  the  men  of  her  day  to  be,  in 
theory  she  was  anything  but  that.  She  was  a  person  of 
inferior  mind,  unable  to  master  the  strong  meat  of  edu- 
cation, unfit  to  be  trusted  with  the  guardianship  of  her 
property  or  her  children,  lest  both  suffer,  not  to  be  al- 
lowed free  speech  in  public  lest  her  tongue  run  away  with 
her  and  disorder  and  loose  doctrines  be  encouraged,  not  to 
be  allowed  to  mix  in  the  gatherings  or  deliberations  of 
men  lest  her  household,  her  manners,  and  public  morals 
suffer.  The  greatest  men  of  New  England  are  on  rec- 
ord on  these  points,  and  the  Church  and  the  Law  upheld 
them."  * 

•Tarbell,  American  Magazine,  vol.  69,  p.  14. 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  245 

The  appreciation  of  human  rights  engendered 
by  the  struggle  for  independence  was  quickened 
by  the  teachings  and  social  experiments  of  Rob- 
ert Owen,  and  by  the  socialistic  propaganda  of 
the  early  forties.  In  the  wake  of  the  extraor- 
dinary prosperity  following  the  panic  of  1837, 
and  as  a  result  of  all  these  economic  and  humani- 
tarian theorizings,  two  movements  arose  which 
were  destined  to  precipitate  a  concrete  feminine 
protest.  Temperance  and  the  abolition  of 
slavery  were  calculated  by  their  very  nature  to 
appeal  to  the  highly  developed  sympathies  of 
womenkind;  and,  as  moral  issues,  might  naturally 
have  been  deemed  suitable  to  their  sphere  in  life. 
The  instinctive  interest  of  women  was  not  in  so- 
cial or  religious  theory;  rather,  there  were  many 
like  Lucretia  Mott,  the  Quaker  preacher,  who 
wrote  of  herself: 

"  The  highest  evidence  of  a  sound  faith  being  the  prac- 
tical life  of  a  Christian,  I  have  felt  a  far  greater  interest 
in  the  moral  movements  of  our  age  than  in  any  theological 
discussion." 

Inspired,  therefore,  by  the  humaner  aspects  of 
religion,  women  organized  temperance  meetings, 
raising  the  money  and  doing  the  largest  part  of 
the  work,  only  to  be  excluded  not  merely  from 
the  rostrum,  but  even  from  the  debates  on  the 
floor.  The  spectacle  of  Antoinette  Brown,  the  ac- 


246  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

credited  delegate  of  two  societies  to  a  temper- 
ance convention  in  New  York,  standing  for  an 
hour  and  a  half,  while  the  men  delegates 
wrangled  and  fought  over  her  right  to  speak,  and 
the  clergymen  cried,  "  Shame  on  such  women!  " 
is  incredible  in  our  day.  One  must  enter  into  it 
from  the  standpoint  of  a  woman  to  comprehend 
the  effect  of  such  injustices  and  insults  repeated 
again  and  again  upon  women  whose  only  offense 
was  that  they  wished  to  share  in  a  philanthropic 
movement. 

The  denial  of  free  speech,  based  on  Paul's  in- 
junction that  women  should  keep  silence  in  the 
churches,  was,  in  fact,  the  exciting  cause  of  the 
first  and  most  extreme  phase  of  the  woman's 
rights  movement.  The  women  delegates  who 
accompanied  William  Lloyd  Garrison  and  Wen- 
dell Phillips  to  the  National  Anti-Slavery  Con- 
vention in  London  in  1840,  were  refused  seats 
and  the  right  of  taking  any  active  part  in  the 
meeting.  Eight  years  afterward  the  first 
woman's  rights  convention  met,  at  which  the 
most  extreme  anti-man  resolutions  ever  pro- 
duced in  the  history  of  the  movement  were 
adopted.  Wholly  untrained  in  the  underlying 
historical  causes  of  their  situation,  and  accus- 
tomed to  dealing  with  the  concrete  in  domestic 
life,  they  made  a  violent  attack  on  mankind  in 
the  tone  of  slaves  denouncing  their  masters. 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  247 

"  The  history  of  mankind  is  a  history  of  repeated  in- 
juries and  usurpations  on  the  part  of  man  towards  woman, 
having  in  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an  absolute 
tyranny  over  her. 

"  He  has  never  permitted  her  to  exercise  her  inalienable 
right  to  the  elective  franchise. 

"  He  has  compelled  her  to  submit  to  laws  in  the  forma- 
tion of  which  she  has  had  no  voice. 

"  He  has  withheld  from  her  rights  which  are  given  to 
the  most  ignorant  and  degraded  men. 

"  He  has  made  her,  if  married,  in  the  eye  of  the  law 
civilly  dead. 

"  He  has  taken  from  her  all  right  in  property,  even  in 
the  wages  she  earns. 

"  He  has  so  framed  the  laws  of  divorce,  as  to  what  shall 
be  the  proper  causes,  and,  in  the  case  of  separation,  to 
whom  the  guardianship  of  the  children  shall  be  given,  as  to 
be  wholly  regardless  of  the  happiness  of  woman. 

"  After  depriving  her  of  all  rights  as  a  married  woman, 
if  single  and  the  owner  of  property,  he  has  taxed  her  to 
support  a  .government  which  recognizes  her  only  when 
her  property  can  be  made  profitable  to  it. 

"He  has  denied  her  the  facilities  for  obtaining  a  thor- 
ough education,  all  colleges  being  closed  against  her. 

"  He  has  created  a  false  public  sentiment  by  giving 
to  the  world  a  different  code  of  morals  for  men  and 
women,  by  which  moral  delinquencies  which  exclude 
women  from  society  are  not  only  tolerated,  but  deemed 
of  little  account  in  man. 

"  He  has  usurped  the  prerogative  of  Jehovah  himself, 
claiming  it  as  his  right  to  assign  for  her  a  sphere  of  action, 
when  that  belongs  to  her  conscience  and  her  God. 

"  He  has  endeavored,  in  every  way  that  he  could,  to  de- 
stroy her  confidence  in  her  own  powers,  to  lessen  her  self- 


248  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

respect,  and  to  make  her  willing  to  lead  a  dependent  and 
abject  life." 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  human  tend- 
encies is  for  the  aggrieved  of  any  class  not  to  stop 
with  the  mere  enumeration  of  their  grievances, 
but  to  place  the  blame  for  their  condition  upon 
those  in  power.  The  historian,  however,  having 
divested  any  protest  of  this  inevitable  and  bitter 
tone,  must  determine  whether  the  wrongs  alleged 
did  in  truth  exist.  If  they  did,  the  violence  of 
expression  is  explained,  if  not  always  fully  justi- 
fied. The  grievances  for  the  first  time  categori- 
cally stated  by  women  in  1848  were  not  exag- 
gerated, although  the  blame  for  their  existence 
could  not  justly  be  laid  upon  men  then  living; 
for  even  now,  after  the  lapse  of  more  than  half  a 
century,  four  of  the  dozen  complaints  still  stand, 
and  others  have  been  only  partially  remedied. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  a  class  so 
limited  in  education  and  social  experience,  and 
awakened  all  at  once  to  the  injustices  of  their 
position,  should  allow  their  indignation  to  get 
away  with  reason  and  prudence,  nor  that  their 
tactics  should  be  amusingly  feminine.  Perhaps 
they  were  not  the  less  effective  on  that  account. 
For  thirty  years  after  this  declaration,  Mrs.  Stan- 
ton  and  Miss  Anthony  were  partners  in  agita- 
tion— "  pertinacious  incendiaries  "  their  contem- 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  249 

poraries  called  them — having  no  compunction  in 
harassing  the  most  dignified  bodies  of  men.  Mrs. 
Stanton  confessed: 

"  Whenever  we  saw  an  annual  convention  of  men, 
quietly  meeting  year  after  year,  filled  with  brotherly  love, 
we  bethought  ourselves  how  we  could  throw  a  bombshell 
into  their  midst,  in  the  form  of  a  resolution  to  open  the 
doors  to  the  sisters  outside.  ...  In  this  way,  we  assailed 
in  turn,  the  temperance,  educational,  and  church  conven- 
tions, agricultural  fairs,  and  halls  of  legislation." 

Yet,  if  the  picture  of  these  insistent  methods 
brings  now  a  smile,  it  brings,  too,  contradictory 
feelings  of  pity  and  respect — pity  that  educated 
men  should  have  been  the  most  narrow-minded  of 
all;  and  respect  for  feminine  conviction  and  cour- 
age which  led  women  to  risk,  in  behalf  of  their 
sex,  all  that  they  had  been  taught  was  most  lovely 
and  respectable. 

The  denial  of  an  active  and  recognized  share 
in  the  temperance  and  educational  reforms  of  the 
time  was  by  no  means  the  most  serious  of  the 
grievances  of  thoughtful  women.  The  married 
woman  was  still  under  the  status  of  the  Common 
Law,  which  gave  her  no  control  of  her  children, 
no  matter  what  her  husband's  treatment  of  her 
or  of  them  might  be;  and  which  made  her  almost 
wholly  dependent  on  her  father,  her  husband,  or 
her  son  in  affairs  of  property.  Lockwood  states 


25o  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

correctly   the    position    in    which    women    found 
themselves : 


"  Till  the  late  forties  the  Common  Law  provisions  re- 
specting the  property  rights  of  married  women  obtained 
in  every  state  except  Louisiana.  These  provisions  wrested 
from  women  all  property  rights.  If  an  unmarried  woman 
through  gift  or  inheritance  came  into  possession  of  prop- 
erty, real  or  personal,  she  forfeited  all  claim  to  it  and  all 
right  to  its  management  and  control  when  she  married. 
It  then  at  once  became  the  property  of  her  husband,  and 
if  he  died,  leaving  no  children,  it  passed  to  his  nearest 
kin,  leaving  the  widow  with  but  a  dower  in  real  estate 
and  a  small  share  in  the  personal  property." 

Owen,  in  The  Free  Inquirer,  put  in  less  dis- 
passionate terms  the  bitterness  which  women 
themselves  no  doubt  felt: 

"  She  can  inherit  nothing,  receive  nothing,  earn  nothing, 
which  her  husband  cannot  at  any  time  legally  wrest  from 
her.  All  her  rights  are  swallowed  up  in  his.  She  loses, 
as  it  were,  her  legal  existence.  She  may  be — thanks  to 
occasional  and  gratuitous  generosity  she  sometimes  is — 
kindly  and  even  rationally  treated ;  but  she  has  no  right  to 
demand — I  will  not  say  kindness — but  even  the  most 
common  justice  and  humanity.  A  man  may  not  beat  his 
wife  too  unmercifully,  nor  is  he  allowed  to  kill  her.  Short 
of  this  he  can  scarcely  transgress  the  law,  so  far  as  she  is 
concerned." 

It  is  a  truism  of  history  to  say  that,  to  what- 
ever degree  there  is  unchecked  power  over  help- 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  251 

less  or  inferior  persons,  there  will  be  a  corre- 
sponding degree  of  abuse.  Susan  Anthony  pro- 
tected and  concealed  a  married  woman,  who  ran 
away  from  an  abusive  and  unfaithful  husband — 
a  man  of  conspicuous  station — in  order  to  keep 
her  child.  Miss  Anthony  was  persecuted  by  her 
friends  and  the  anti-slavery  people  because  she 
would  not  reveal  the  fugitive's  hiding-place,  but 
she  declared: 

"  As  I  ignore  all  law  to  help  the  slave  so  will  I  ignore 
it  to  protect  an  enslaved  woman." 

The  wife  was  able  to  earn  her  living  in  secret 
for  some  years,  but  her  husband  finally  drew  the 
income  from  her  books,  and  stole  the  daughter 
from  her.  Such  cases  were  by  no  means  un- 
common at  this  period.  One  of  my  very  earliest 
recollections  is  a  picture  of  a  wretched  and  deter- 
mined woman  with  a  baby  under  her  shawl,  who 
had  taken  refuge  after  nightfall  behind  our 
kitchen  stove,  begging  my  father  to  help  her  run 
away  from  a  drunken  husband,  because  there  was 
no  safety  for  the  child,  nor  help  to  be  invoked 
from  the  law.  The  little  Elizabeth  Cady  saw 
many  frantic  women  appealing  to  her  father  for 
legal  protection,  and  when  she  was  told  that  it 
was  "  The  Law  "  encased  in  the  yellow  volumes 
on  the  shelves  which  prevented  him  from  help- 


252  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

ing  them,  she  began  to  cut  the  "  woman  laws  " 
out  of  his  law  books. 

Alice  Stone  Blackwell  has  expressed  dis- 
passionately the  attitude  of  thinking  women  with 
regard  to  the  legal  view  of  women's  services  and 
their  property  rights  which  was  current  in  Amer- 
ica at  the  time  the  woman  movement  began: 

"  Most  men  are  better  than  the  law,  and  few  hus- 
bands use  the  extreme  and  tyrannical  power  which  the 
law  gives  them;  but  there  the  law  is,  ready  for  any  bad 
husband  to  take  advantage  of  it.  ...  This  does  not  show 
any  special  depravity  on  the  part  of  men.  If  women 
alone  had  made  the  laws  no  doubt  the  laws  would  have 
been  just  as  one-sided  .  .  .  only  it  would  have  been  the 
other  way  round.  No  doubt  it  would  have  taken  a  long 
and  arduous  man's  rights  movement  to  bring  about  the 
needed  improvements,  and  .  .  .  we  may  be  sure  that  the 
women  would  not  have  so  far  altered  the  old  laws  as  to 
make  them  glaringly  unjust  to  women." 

It  required  ten  years  of  incessant  attack  in  the 
state  of  New  York  to  get  a  modification  of  the  law 
giving  the  man  sole  control  of  the  children;  and 
when  the  women  agitators,  diverted  by  the  Civil 
War,  rested  from  their  vigilance  for  one  session, 
the  Legislature  quietly  put  the  law  back  on  the 
statute  books  in  almost  its  original  form — and 
the  women  had  to  begin  all  over  again.  And  at 
the  time  of  this  writing  only  thirteen  states  give 
to  women  the  joint  guardianship  of  their  children. 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  253 

It  is  necessary  constantly  to  remind  ourselves 
of  such  facts  as  these  if  we  would  comprehend 
the  bitterness  with  which  the  woman's  rights 
movement  began.  Nor  must  we  forget  that  mar- 
riage and  motherhood  was  the  only  career  held 
open  to  women  or  deemed  creditable  to  them; 
that  from  the  Pulpit  and  the  Press  their  potential 
motherhood  was  urged  as  the  unalterable  reason 
for  their  protection  and  support  by  mankind. 
Such  inconsistency  between  doctrine  and  deed  on 
the  part  of  men,  though  disguised  under  the  veil 
of  religion  and  domestic  purity,  was  too  evident 
to  be  missed  even  by  the  untrained  female  in- 
tellect. Many  a  domestic  woman,  without  the 
courage  or  capacity  of  the  exceptional  leaders  of 
the  woman's  rights  movement,  had  as  great  a 
sense  of  injustice  which  she  dared  not  express. 
Very  few  men,  even,  have  the  courage  to  quarrel 
with  their  bread  and  butter,  or  to  disrupt  their 
family  peace  for  the  sake  of  a  principle;  how 
much  less,  then,  should  women  accustomed  to 
ages  of  subordination  be  expected  to  do  so,  al- 
though it  might  ultimately  bring  them  greater 
freedom  and  happiness? 

Besides  the  growing  sense  of  human  rights  in 
the  air  about  them,  and  the  social  injustices  of 
which  they  were  becoming  keenly  sensible,  an- 
other kind  of  limitation  began  to  chafe  women 
who  had  to  support  themselves  outside  the  home. 


254  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

The  widespread  movement  for  common-school 
education,  for  better  private  schools,  and,  finally, 
for  people's  universities,  created  a  sudden  de- 
mand for  teachers.  Then,  as  now,  men  could 
make  more  money  and  have  more  exciting  careers 
in  other  occupations  than  teaching.  Moreover, 
when  the  male  population  was  reduced  and  fam- 
ilies were  impoverished  by  the  Civil  War,  the 
number  of  women  who  must  earn  wages  was 
greatly  increased,  and,  for  the  educated  woman, 
teaching  was  the  easiest  and  least  unwomanly  path 
to  self-support. 

They  found  themselves  compelled  to  accept 
from  one-half  to  one-third  as  much  as  men  for 
their  work  in  the  same  positions.  Miss  An- 
thony, for  instance,  taught  twelve  years  before 
she  undertook  her  life-work  as  a  reformer,  dur- 
ing most  of  which  she  received  eight  dollars  a 
month  in  positions  where  men  had  been  paid  from 
twenty  to  thirty  dollars.  At  a  state  teachers' 
convention,  held  in  Rochester  in  1853,  there  were 
five  hundred  teachers  present,  two-thirds  of  them 
women.  All  of  them  had  paid  their  fee,  but  not 
one  of  them  was  allowed  to  speak  or  vote — ex- 
cept Miss  Anthony,  who,  by  her  pertinacity,  won 
a  grudging  permission  from  the  male  minority  to 
make  one  short  speech.  At  this  time,  in  Roch- 
ester, New  York,  a  woman  principal  received  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  year  in  positions 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  255 

where  men  received  six  hundred  and  fifty  dollars; 
while  in  the  state  at  large  there  were  eleven  thou- 
sand teachers,  four-fifths  of  whom  were  women, 
yet  the  women  received  only  one-third  of  the  total 
salary  fund. 

No  sooner  did  women  begin  to  teach  in  consid- 
erable numbers  than  they  discovered  the  super- 
ficial and  inadequate  character  of  their  book  edu- 
cation, which  they  had  to  remedy  as  best  they 
might  by  night  study  and  scanty  courses  in 
schools  invariably  inferior  to  those  provided  for 
young  men.  In  this  respect  girls  of  good  birth 
who  did  not  attempt  to  earn  their  living  were 
scarcely  better  off  than  their  poorer  sisters. 
Elizabeth  Cady  went  two  years  to  a  boarding- 
school,  which  was  then  considered  the  best  in  the 
country,  but  she  records  those  years  as  "  the 
dreariest  in  her  life."  Lucy  Stone's  parents  ex- 
pected her  to  stay  at  home  and  work  on  the  farm, 
while  her  brothers  went  to  college;  but  she  re- 
fused to  do  so,  borrowed  the  money  to  go  to 
Oberlin — the  only  college  of  good  rank  open  to 
her — and  there  discovered  her  remarkable  gift 
for  public  speaking.  Of  Lydia  Maria  Child  it  is 
recorded : 

"  She  combined  the  authorship  of  more  than  thirty  books 
and  pamphlets  with  a  singular  devotion  both  to  public  and 
private  philanthropies,  and  with  almost  too  exacting  a 
faithfulness  to  the  humblest  domestic  duties." 


256  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

Yet,  although  she  had  a  superior  mind  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  her  brother,  Convers  Francis, 
who  became  one  of  the  most  advanced  thinkers 
of  the  Unitarian  body,  she  had 

"  a  very  unequal  share  of  opportunities,  having,  in  fact, 
only  such  preparation  as  she  could  get  in  attending  the 
public  schools  and  one  year  in  a  private  seminary." 

.Girls  who,  by  their  ambition  and  innate 
capacity,  could  not  help  rising  above  the  feminine 
standards  of  the  day,  were  pitied  rather  than  en- 
couraged to  utilize  their  powers.  The  father  of 
Frances  Gage,  when  she  was  helping  him  to  make 
barrels,  used  to  be  sorry  for  himself  rather  than 
for  her,  because  she  was  not  a  boy.  After  the 
premature  death  of  her  brother  at  Union  Col- 
lege, the  little  Elizabeth  Cady  studied  very  hard 
and  won  a  Greek  prize,  with  which  she  hoped  to 
surprise  her  father  and  comfort  him  somewhat 
for  the  loss  of  his  brilliant  son.  But  when  she 
brought  the  trophy  to  him,  he  only  bemoaned 
the  fact  that  she  was  not  a  boy.  And,  although 
in  later  years  she  read  law  so  as  to  entertain  in- 
telligently her  father's  legal  guests,  when  she 
joined  the  woman's  rights  movement  he  brought 
all  his  authority  to  bear,  and  told  his  married 
daughter,  who  was  to  prove  herself  as  able  as 
he,  that  he  would  rather  "  see  her  under  the 
sod  "  than  engaged  in  such  an  agitation. 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  257 

When  once  the  exceptional  woman  had  mus- 
tered courage  for  the  hardships  of  getting  an  edu- 
cation, or  had  jeopardized  her  social  standing  by 
joining  in  some  of  the  current  reforms,  her  re- 
sentment toward  narrow-minded  men  was  doubt- 
less intensified  by  their  refusal  to  acknowledge 
her  capacity,  or  to  recognize  ungrudgingly  the 
value  of  her  service.  The  experience  of  An- 
toinette Blackwell  was  certainly  calculated  to 
make  a  beautiful  and  talented  woman  into  an 
iconoclast.  Having  partly  worked  her  way 
through  Oberlin  College,  and  taught  for  several 
years,  she  returned  there  to  study  theology,  and 
at  the  end  of  her  course  was  refused  a  license 
to  preach  solely  because  she  was  a  woman.  Theol- 
ogy was,  indeed,  a  scandalous  field  of  labor  for 
women  from  the  standpoint  of  church  con- 
servatism, but  in  fields  of  social  service  far  less 
unusual,  and  in  which  the  feminine  gifts  were  cer- 
tainly useful,  women  workers  found  just  as  little 
appreciation. 

The  story  of  Frances  Gage  is  an  example  of 
the  tardy  and  inadequate  recognition  of  services 
as  valuable  and  far  more  exceptional  than  those 
of  many  fighting  men  during  the  Civil  War.  Al- 
though poor  and  in  the  midst  of  bearing  and 
rearing  eight  children,  she  yet  found  time  to 
read  and  write  and  speak  of  slavery,  temper- 
ance, and  woman's  rights;  she  suffered  the  loss 


25  8  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

of  property  because  of  her  abolition  principles; 
and  when,  by  reason  of  her  husband's  illness  and 
business  failure,  she  had  to  support  the  family 
as  assistant  editor  of  an  agricultural  paper,  the 
War  destroyed  the  paper.  She  sent  four  sons  to 
the  army,  and  she  and  a  daughter  went  to  the 
South  to  give  their  unpaid  services  to  the  soldiers. 
So  terrible  were  the  conditions  there  that  she 
came  back,  to  travel  through  the  North  and  speak 
merely  for  her  expenses,  in  order  to  rouse  the 
public  to  remedy  them.  When  over  fifty  years 
of  age,  she  was  still  serving  as  unsalaried  agent 
of  the  Sanitary  Commission;  and,  finally,  after 
the  War,  she  still  had  ability  enough  to  earn  for 
herself  a  home  for  her  old  age.  In  this  woman 
was  combined  the  practical  business  ability  of  a 
man,  with  the  largest  motherly  and  humane  in- 
stincts, and  yet  her  life  has  been  given  slight 
notice,  except  in  woman's  rights  publications. 

How  deeply  this  lack  of  appreciation  of  the 
sacrifices,  the  hardships,  and  the  labors  of  the 
women  of  the  country  incident  to  the  great  war 
has  cut,  may  be  known  from  a  single  paragraph 
in  the  Autobiography  of  Susan  B.  Anthony. 

'  There  can  never  be  an  adequate  portrayal  of  the 
service  rendered  by  women  of  this  country  during  the 
Civil  War,  but  none  will  deny  that,  according  to  their 
opportunities,  they  were  as  faithful  and  self-sacrificing 
as  the  men.  .  .  Yet  not  one  of  these  ever  received  the 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  259 

slightest  official  recognition  from  the  government.  In  the 
cases  of  Miss  Carroll,  Dr.  Blackwell,  and  Mrs.  Griffing, 
the  honors  and  the  profits  were  all  absorbed  by  men. 
Neither  Clara  Barton  nor  Dorothea  Dix  ever  asked  for  a 
pension.  All  of  these  women  at  the  close  of  the  war 
asked  for  the  right  of  suffrage.  .  .  . 

"  What  words  can  express  her  humiliation  when,  at  the 
close  of  this  long  conflict,  the  government  which  she  had 
served  so  faithfully  held  her  unworthy  of  a  voice  in  its 
councils,  while  it  recognized  as  the  political  superiors  of 
all  the  noble  women  of  the  nation  the  negro  men  just 
emerged  from  slavery,  and  not  only  totally  illiterate,  but 
also  densely  ignorant  of  every  public  question." 

Here  was  in  truth  a  cause  for  humiliation  even 
to  those  women  who  had  taken  no  part  in  the 
woman's  rights  movement,  and  one  which  has 
had  its  share  in  converting  the  conservative 
women  of  our  day  to  the  necessity  for  self-asser- 
tion. For  the  suffrage,  extended  to  the  negro 
as  a  measure  of  protection,  has  inevitably  been 
given  to  foreigners  of  every  race  and  class,  until 
there  is  presented  the  curious  situation  of  a  gov- 
ernment, founded  for  the  expression  of  demo- 
cratic ideas,  all  of  whose  ignorant  citizens  may 
vote,  and  nearly  half  of  whose  educated  and 
property-owning  members  are  shut  out  from  rep- 
resentation or  share  in  public  issues. 

It  was  customary  for  a  generation  after  the 
War  to  give  as  an  unanswerable  reason  why 
women  should  not  be  given  the  vote,  that  they 


260  WOiMEN  INSURGENTS 

could  not  fight  for  their  country.  Although  this 
is  not  so  often  heard  in  modern  times,  it  was 
none  the  less  untenable  even  when  it  was  in  vogue. 
The  figures  of  the  Provost  Marshal's  Bureau 
during  the  War  showed  the  physical  condition  of 
more  than  a  million  men.  Two  hundred  and 
fifty-seven  out  of  every  thousand  were  declared 
unfit  for  military  service,  and  their  unfitness  was 
in  inverse  proportion  to  their  social  and  political 
importance,  as  shown  below: 

Unfit:     Unskilled  laborers  348  out  of  each   1000 

Tanners  216     ""       " 

Ironworkers  187     "    "       " 

Lawyers  544     "    "       " 

Journalists  740     "    "       " 

Clergymen  954     "    "       " 

In  a  time  when  these  facts  were  familiar  it  was 
no  doubt  galling  to  women  to  know  that  of  the 
divines,  the  editors,  and  the  lawyers  who  filled 
Congress,  nearly  all  of  whom  were  opponents  of 
women's  rights,  the  majority  could  not  them- 
selves be  defenders  of  their  country. 

Since  the  orthodox  churches  were  the  chief  dis- 
seminators of  the  traditional  views  of  woman's 
sphere,  it  was  inevitable  that  exceptional  women 
should  take  refuge  in  the  societies  representing 
newer  and  less  conventional  forms  of  religious 
and  social  dogma.  The  Society  of  Friends  put 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  261 

no  hindrance  in  the  way  of  women  becoming 
preachers,  and  recognized  their  capacity  as 
human  beings,  regardless  of  sex.  Lucretia  Mott, 
with  a  family  of  little  children  about  her,  felt  the 
call  of  the  Spirit,  and,  in  spite  of  delicate  health 
and  many  cares,  became  one  of  the  rarest  as  well 
as  one  of  the  keenest  of  the  early  women  in  pub- 
lic life.  It  may  be  that  the  strong  heart  of  Susan 
B.  Anthony  would  have  failed  but  for  the  wise 
and  wholly  sympathetic  backing  of  her  fine  old 
Quaker  father.  The  incorrigibly  honest,  sensitive, 
hungry-minded  Anna  Dickinson  might,  perhaps, 
have  been  stunted  to  the  stature  of  a  mere  Ish- 
maelite  instead  of  becoming  a  great  political 
speaker,  had  she  not  been  born  in  a  gentle  and 
earnest  community  of  Friends. 

In  all  the  Utopian  and  socialistic  colonies  char- 
acteristic of  this  period  of  our  history  there  were 
women  drawn  from  their  home  churches  by  the 
larger  and  more  prophetic  atmosphere  to  be 
breathed  there.  Frances  Wright  took  refuge  in 
New  Harmony  with  the  followers  of  Owen.  The 
Unitarian  societies  received  accessions  both  from 
the  less  liberal  Friends  and  from  the  Trinitarian 
bodies,  of  women  as  well  as  men,  who  could  no 
longer  endure  the  narrow  and  inhuman  bonds 
which  they  set.  Such  colonies  as  New  Harmony 
and  Brook  Farm,  though  founded  from  motives 
far  removed  in  the  beginning  from  those  which 


262  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

were  precipitating  the  woman  question,  inevitably 
promoted  the  development  of  exceptional  women 
whose  careers  were  in  themselves  a  contradiction 
of  the  accepted  views  as  to  feminine  capacity. 
Then,  as  now,  whenever  a  thinking  man  came  to 
know  such  a  woman,  he  ever  afterwards  had  an 
enlarged  idea  of  what  women  might  become 
under  the  stimulus  of  broadened  opportunities. 

Although  a  few  of  the  most  striking  of  the 
early  come-outers  from  domestic  womenkind 
were  made  so  by  some  thwarting  personal  ex- 
perience, by  far  the  larger  number  were  normal 
women  driven  into  publicity  by  the  necessity  of 
self-support,  or  by  their  attachment  to  some 
benevolent  cause  or  social  reform.  The  hus- 
bands of  some  failed  in  business;  others  were 
widows  obliged  to  earn  a  living  for  their  chil- 
dren, or  daughters  helping  their  parents.  In 
such  cases  they  were  of  necessity  blindly  doing 
men's  work,  because  they  could  not  earn  enough 
in  the  purely  domestic  avocations.  This  unpre- 
meditated escape  from  domesticity  was  often 
made  imperative  by  the  change  from  an  agri- 
cultural to  an  industrial  regime  in  the  com- 
munities about  them,  and  by  the  exigencies  of 
war.  Just  as  on  the  Continent  of  Europe  women 
have  for  ages  been  replacing  in  the  fields  of  pro- 
duction the  men  drawn  from  them  for  military 
purposes,  so  many  women  in  the  United  States, 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  263 

during  and  after  the  War,  replaced  the  men  in 
the  field,  the  office,  and  the  factory. 

A  modern  novelist  makes  one  of  his  characters 
says: 

"  There  have  been  thousands  of  Queens.  Only  a  few 
have  been  great.  Do  you  know  why  those  few  were 
great  ?  Because  there  was  no  King  to  meddle ;  they  had  to 
be  queens,  and  so  they  became  immortal." 

In  our  day  it  is  so  common  to  see  women  who 
have  been  released  from  the  domestic  routine  by 
loss  of  family,  or  childlessness,  or  failure  to 
marry,  making  themselves  efficient  in  the  same 
fields  as  men,  that  it  requires  an  effort  to  realize 
the  strength  of  character  on  the  one  hand,  or  the 
social  compulsion  on  the  other,  which  was  neces- 
sary half  a  century  ago  to  make  a  woman  break 
through  the  conventions. 

If  they  had  but  known  it,  these  women,  who 
formulated  the  Declaration  of  Sentiments  in 
1848,  touched  only  lightly  the  basic  question 
which  underlay  all  the  struggles  of  the  women  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  when  they  declared: 

"  He  has  usurped  the  prerogative  of  Jehovah  himself, 
claiming  it  as  his  right  to  assign  for  her  a  sphere  of  action, 
when  that  belongs  to  her  conscience  and  her  God." 

Beneath  the  demand  for  specific  rights  and  the 
protest  against  definite  injustice,  lay  something 


264  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

more  fundamental  which  conditioned  them  all: 
should  women  be  allowed  to  judge  for  them- 
selves what  was  right  and  wrong,  and  to  act  ac- 
cordingly? Were  they  at  last  grown-up  human 
beings,  or  still  only  in  tutelage  to  men?  Without 
being  aware  of  it,  these  first  come-outers  were 
arming  themselves  against  the  oldest  traditions 
of  society — the  authority  of  the  Church  over  the 
human  mind,  and  the  authority  of  man  over 
woman.  Dimly,  and  as  yet  by  instinct,  rather 
than  reason,  the  first  exceptional  women  knew 
that  their  case  was  analogous  to  that  of  the  slave 
— for  he,  too,  was  caught  in  the  meshes  of  a 
tradition  pegged  fast  at  every  point  to  the  Chris- 
tian Scriptures.  The  doctrine  of  plenary  in- 
spiration and  the  practice  of  literal  interpretation 
still  gave  to  every  man  an  unanswerable  rebuttal 
for  every  argument  in  behalf  of  female  freedom. 
In  much  of  the  literature  of  the  woman  move- 
ment it  is  assumed  that  the  women  insurgents  of 
the  last  century  set  out  to  emancipate  their  kind 
in  a  temper  of  sheer  eccentricity  and  belligerency 
—but  nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth. 
They  were  rather  like  the  patriots  of  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution :  for  a  long,  long  time  conscious 
of  injustice,  but  unwilling  to  precipitate  a 
struggle;  then,  when  the  fight  was  suddenly  im- 
minent, a  few  went  into  it  as  into  a  joyous  con- 
test, but  by  far  the  larger  number  went  re- 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  265 

luctantly,  at  the  call  of  duty,  and  shrinking  from 
the  necessity  of  making  themselves  odd  and  con- 
spicuous. Not  one  of  the  women  who  are  now 
recorded  as  the  leaders  of  the  movement  began 
as  a  deliberate  promoter  of  female  rights;  all 
were  literally  driven  into  the  fight  by  the  arrogant 
complacency  of  reformers  who  were  perfectly 
sure  that  God  had  ordained  them  a  chosen  sex 
for  the  guidance  and  control  of  the  weaker 
vessels. 

Looking  upon  the  pitiful  beginnings  of  the 
woman  movement,  it  seems  as  if  the  Spirit  of 
Justice,  wearily  hovering  for  centuries  about  the 
world,  at  last  breathed  upon  the  altar  fires  of 
homekeeping  women,  and  kindled  them  into 
flame,  until  they  were  obliged  to  join  in  some  of 
the  moral  issues  of  their  time,  though  it  might 
lead  to  social  martyrdom.  Of  all  the  moral 
questions  bruited  in  the  thirties  and  forties, 
slavery  was  the  most  odious;  but  women  who  be- 
gan to  work  most  modestly  for  educational  and 
temperance  reforms  found  themselves  driven  by 
their  very  femininity  to  take  part  in  it.  Inas- 
much as  by  their  potential  motherhood  they  were 
sensitized  to  finer  human  issues,  they  could  not 
escape  being  caught  up  by  the  wave  of  humani- 
tarianism  which  was  engulfing  the  Western 
World. 

From    whatever    little    islet    of    homekeeping 


266  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

traditions  they  came,  no  sooner  did  they  set  out 
for  a  larger  continent  than  they  began  to  find 
themselves  tossed  about  on  a  stormy  sea,  and, 
in  the  minds  of  their  conservative  friends,  re- 
garded as  wholly  lost.  In  an  old  book  called 
Eminent  Women  of  the  Age,  the  tone  of  which 
is  extremely  conservative,  I  find  the  following 
paragraph : 

"  The  women  who  devoted  themselves  to  the  anti- 
slavery  cause  in  the  early  days,  endured  the  double  odium 
of  being  abolitionists  and  '  women  out  of  their  sphere.' 
.  .  .  The  Press  and  the  Pulpit  exhausted  the  English 
language  to  find  adjectives  to  express  their  detestation  of 
so  horrible  a  revelation  as  '  a  woman  out  of  her  sphere.' 
A  clerical  appeal  was  issued  and  sent  to  all  the  clergy- 
men of  New  England  calling  on  them  to  denounce  in 
their  pulpits  this  unwomanly  and  unchristian  proceeding." 

But  when  once  they  had  faced  and  accepted 
ostracism  as  the  price  of  a  share  in  social  service, 
it  was  natural,  if  not  altogether  wise,  that  they 
should  lend  themselves  to  every  other  kind  of 
reform.  They  could  not  be  satisfied  to  pursue 
single-mindedly  one  chosen  and  greater  cause — 
they  must  give  their  support  to  every  small  and 
ill-advised  one  as  well;  bringing  upon  themselves 
and  upon  higher  issues  the  cumulative  odium  and 
ridicule  of  them  all.  For  three-quarters  of  a 
century  the  fundamental  human  question,  whether 
woman  was  made  "  for  man,"  or  whether  she 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  267 

was  an  adult  being  with  an  "  inalienable  right  " 
to  judge  and  act  for  herself,  has  been  obscured, 
distorted,  and  delayed  by  the  opprobrium  at- 
tached to  contemporary  social  reforms.  From 
infidelity  and  free-love,  with  which  the  Owenites 
were  charged,  to  the  subversion  of  society  by 
abolition;  from  the  derision  heaped  upon  the 
"  water-cure  "  and  transcendentalism,  to  the 
Bloomer  costume,  every  form  of  public  ridicule 
has  been  associated  with  the  reforms  demanded 
by  and  for  women. 

Miss  Anthony  was  one  of  the  first  to  see  clearly 
that,  so  far  as  the  solution  of  the  woman  ques- 
tion was  concerned,  this  policy  was  a  mistake. 
After  reluctantly  adopting  the  Bloomer  costume, 
she  abandoned  it,  and  wrote  in  explanation  to  a 
friend : 

"  I  found  it  a  physical  comfort  but  a  mental  crucifixion. 
It  was  an  intellectual  slavery;  one  could  never  get  rid  of 
thinking  about  herself,  and  the  important  thing  is  to  for- 
get self.  The  attention  of  my  audience  was  fixed  upon 
my  clothes  instead  of  my  words.  /  learned  the  lesson  that 
to  be  successful  a  person  must  attempt  but  one  reform. 
By  urging  two,  both  are  injured,  as  the  average  mind  can 
grasp  and  assimilate  but  one  idea  at  a  time." 

In  our  time  the  phrase  "  woman's  rights  "  is 
almost  exclusively  used  to  refer  to  woman 
suffrage;  but  when  the  Declaration  of  Sentiments 


268  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

was  made  in  1848,  the  denial  of  suffrage  was 
only  one,  and  by  no  means  the  most  important, 
of  the  twelve  grievances  enumerated.  To-day  it 
remains  the  most  important  of  those  not  yet 
remedied,  the  others  being  already  partially  ac- 
complished and  fallen  back  to  the  normal  posi- 
tion of  a  few  among  many  desirable  reforms  for 
the  public  welfare.  The  extremely  slow  prog- 
ress of  opinion  with  regard  to  suffrage  has  been 
due  partly  to  the  discredit  shed  upon  it  by  its 
connection  with  anti-slavery;  but  still  more  to 
the  decline  of  enthusiasm  with  respect  to  man- 
hood suffrage,  which  was  originally  looked  upon 
as  the  democratic  panacea  for  all  political  and 
social  ills. 

The  disappointing  results  of  manhood  suffrage, 
attributed  in  part  to  the  addition  of  the  illiterate 
negro  and  the  unassimilated  foreigner,  has  led 
•to  a  reaction  against  the  extension  of  suffrage  as 
a  means  of  social  reform.  The  apathy  of 
women  themselves  and  the  conservatism  of  intel- 
ligent men  with  regard  to  woman  suffrage  may 
be  assigned  in  great  measure  to  the  general  feel- 
ing that,  since  manhood  suffrage  has  not 
reformed  the  world,  the  calling  in  of  women, 
presumably  less  intelligent,  would  produce  even 
worse  conditions. 

As  so  often  happens  in  the  development  of  any 
truth,  the  aspects  deemed  most  important  in  the 


WOMEN  INSURGENTS  269 

beginning  are  gradually  subordinated  to  broader 
ones.  The  emphasis  upon  freedom  from  the 
moral  domination  of  men,  made  by  the  first  fe- 
male insurgents,  is  now  transferred  to  a  readjust- 
ment of  the  marriage  relations  and  the  question 
of  economic  responsibility.  Because  the  tradi- 
tion of  feminine  docility  and  tutelage  is  still  in 
possession  of  a  majority  of  men's  minds,  the 
woman  who  breaks  through  it  anywhere  pays  a 
penalty.  Not  so  terrible,  not  so  far-reaching  as 
the  first  fugitives  paid  for  their  venture  outside 
their  sphere,  but  a  very  real  one,  neverthe- 
less. 

Miss  Tarbell,  in  her  History  of  the  American 
Woman,  has  summed  up  the  debt  which  the  world 
owes  to  the  militant  type  of  womanhood: 

"  She  was  then,  and  always  has  been,  a  tragic  figure, 
this  woman  in  the  front  of  the  woman's  movement — driven 
by  a  great  unrest,  sacrificing  old  ideals  to  attain  new, 
losing  herself  in  a  frantic  and  frequently  blind  struggle, 
often  putting  back  her  cause  by  the  sad  illustration  she 
was  of  the  price  that  must  be  paid  to  attain  a  result.  .  .  . 
But  there  is  no  home  in  the  land  which  has  not  a  better 
chance  for  happiness,  no  child  which  does  not  come  into 
a  better  heritage,  no  woman  who  is  not  less  narrow,  no 
man  who  is  not  less  bigoted,  because  of  the  impetus  their 
struggle  and  sacrifice  gave  to  the  emancipation  of  the  sex." 

To  the  first  martyrs  among  women  we  owe 
above  all  the  fact  that,  however  mistaken  in  a 


270  WOMEN  INSURGENTS 

particular  cause  or  method,  a  woman  may  now 
judge  for  herself;  that  she  may  now  begin  to 
remake  her  own  sphere,  upheld  and  encouraged 
by  men  of  larger  minds,  and  of  sympathies  which 
are  at  last  human,  not  simply  masculine. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
LITERARY  AMATEURS 

"  Even  the  most  serious-minded  women  of  the  present  day 
stand,  in  any  work  they  undertake,  in  precisely  the  same  re- 
lation to  men  that  the  amateur  stands  to  the  professional  in 
games.  They  may  be  desperately  interested  and  may  work  to 
the  limit  of  endurance  at  times;  but,  like  the  amateur,  they  got 
into  the  game  late,  and  have  not  had  a  lifetime  of  practice,  or 
they  do  not  have  the  advantage  of  that  pace  gained  only  by 
competing  incessantly  with  players  of  the  first  rank." — THOMAS — 
Sex  and  Society. 

"  The  chances  are  that,  being  a  woman,  young, 
And  pure,  with  such  a  pair  of  large,  calm  eyes, 
You  write  as  well  .  .  .  and  ill  ...  upon  the  whole, 
As  other  women.     If   as  well,   what  then? 
If  even  a  little  better  .  .  .  still  what  then? 

.  .  Women  as  you  are, 
Mere  women,  personal  and  passionate, 
You  give  us  doating  mothers,  and  perfect  wives, 
Sublime  Madonnas  and  enduring  saints! 
We  get  no   Christ  from  you — and  verily 
We  shall  not  get  a  Poet,  in  my  mind. 

You  never  can  be  satisfied  with  praise 
Which  men  give  women  when  they  judge  a  book 
Not  as  mere  work,  but  as  mere  women's  work, 
Expressing  the  comparative  respect 
Which  means  the  absolute  scorn.     'Oh,  excellent! 
What    grace!     What   facile   turns!     What    fluent   sweeps! 
What  delicate  discernment  .  .  .  almost  thought! 
The  book  does  honour  to  the  sex,  we  hold. 
271 


272  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

Among  our  female  authors  we  make  room 
For  this  fair  writer,  and  congratulate 
The  country  that  produces   in   these  times 
Such  women,  competent  to  ...  spell. '  " 

— ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING. 

THE  process  of  making  any  new  tradition  is 
curiously  hesitating  and  erratic.  The  new  idea, 
at  first  proposed  in  some  extreme  form,  draws  to 
its  support  a  few  strong-minded  people  who  be- 
come martyrs  for  its  sake;  and  is  then  likely  to 
be  taken  up  by  the  freakish  or  the  zealously  un- 
wise, and  to  become  odious  to  the  conventional 
majority.  Between  the  proponents  of  the  theory 
and  the  conservatives,  however,  there  will  always 
be  a  third  group  who,  while  lacking  the  courage 
of  complete  conversion,  will,  nevertheless,  have 
a  sneaking  sympathy  with  the  venture.  Such  as 
these  will  decline  to  identify  themselves  with  the 
movement  so  long  as  it  is  unpopular,  but  they 
cannot  avoid  furthering  it  unconsciously  by  indi- 
rect expressions  of  their  own  sympathies. 

Many  of  the  early  women  writers  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  belong  to  this  intermediate  class. 
While  the  radicals  embraced  woman's  rights  and 
anti-slavery  with  uncalculating  fervor,  and  were 
getting  themselves  mobbed  by  the  populace,  re- 
proved by  the  clergy,  and  ridiculed  by  the  press, 
many  a  clever  woman  of  the  more  timid  and  do- 
mesticated type  was  encouraged  to  break  through 
the  domestic  traditions  by  the  demand  for 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  273 

popular  reading  matter,  which  had  opportunely 
opened  a  new  avocation  to  women.  It  does  not 
appear  that  they  entered  it  because  they  were 
especially  gifted,  but  rather  because  writing  was 
a  ladylike  occupation,  which  could  be  pursued 
in  the  seclusion  of  the  home,  under  the  protection 
of  a  nom  de  plume,  and  in  the  midst  of  domestic 
duties.  While  a  few,  bolder  or  more  talented, 
tried  to  compete  with  men  in  the  well-worn  paths 
of  literature,  the  most  of  those  who,  by  virtue 
of  personal  inclination  or  of  bread-and-butter 
necessity,  began  to  write,  merely  followed  the  line 
of  least  resistance.  Although  they  and  their  ad- 
mirers abjured  the  taint  of  strong-mindedness, 
they  were  really  in  some  wise  driven  by  the  same 
human  and  unfeminine  impulse  as  their  militant 
sisters.  They,  too,  in  varying  degree,  were 
"  sports  "  from  the  traditional  feminine  type,  and 
their  less  extravagant  departure  from  it  makes 
their  characteristics  and  achievements  all  the 
more  significant. 

Among  men  the  first  national  impulse  toward 
expression  took  the  form  of  oratory,  but  among 
conventionalized  women  writing  was  the  easier 
outlet,  and  the  one  least  disapproved  of  by  so- 
ciety. Out  of  six  hundred  women  born  after 
1800,  and  listed  in  the  biographical  dictionaries 
of  the  last  quarter  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
more  than  half  entered  the  life  of  the  larger 


274  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

world  outside  the  home  through  "  literature  "  in 
its  varied  forms — through  cookbooks,  nursery 
tales,  journalistic  letters,  poetry,  fiction,  or  his- 
tory. Then,  as  now,  a  "  facile  "  pen  and  a  little 
"  inspiration  "  were  thought  to  be  sufficient  equip- 
ment with  which  to  undertake  this  graceful  and 
ladylike  profession;  and  the  amount  of  copy 
turned  out  by  such  women  as  Mrs.  Sigourney  and 
Mrs.  Child  was  exceeded  by  few  of  their  mas- 
culine contemporaries. 

As  might  have  been  expected,  they  almost  in- 
variably began  with  subjects  distinctively  fem- 
inine, partly  because  it  was  familiar  ground,  but 
chiefly,  no  doubt,  because  it  would  not  be  deemed 
"unwomanly"  by  their  critics;  or,  as  Higginson 
caustically  put  it:  "  Any  career  you  choose  so  you 
begin  it  from  the  kitchen."  Lydia  Child,  who 
afterward  wrote  an  anti-slavery  argument,  which 
has  become  a  classic,  began  with  a  cookery  book, 
The  Frugal  Housewife,  which  went  to  thirty- 
three  editions;  and  followed  it  up  with  A  Biog- 
raphy of  Good  Wives  and  The  Family  Nurse. 
In  all  of  these  she  was  highly  popular;  and  might, 
perhaps,  have  been  equally  so  with  her  romance 
of  ancient  Greece,  Philothea,  but  for  her  fatal 
espousal  of  the  anti-slavery  cause,  and  her  de- 
fense of  John  Brown.  Her  "  Letters  from  New 
York  "  to  the  Boston  Courier  show  a  profound 
insight  into  the  social  and  political  problems  of 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  275 

the  time,  and  have  a  rarely  "  masculine  "  direct- 
ness and  grasp.  There  was  scarcely  a  field  of 
writing — except  science — to  which  she  did  not 
contribute;  and  in  all  of  them — housewifery,  his- 
tory, biography,  religion,  reform,  journalistic 
correspondence,  novels,  and  verse — she  made 
a  more  than  creditable  showing. 

But  in  Mrs.  Child's  performance,  as  in  those 
of  most  of  the  thinking  women  of  her  time,  we 
see  both  that  diffusion  of  abilities  characteristic 
of  the  amateur  and  that  tendency  to  subordinate 
artistic  talent  to  a  philanthropic  cause  which,  even 
in  our  day,  are  conspicuous  traits  of  intellectual 
women.  Higginson  said  of  her: 

"  She  is  one  of  those  prominent  instances  in  our  litera- 
ture, of  persons  born  for  the  pursuits  of  the  pure  intellect 
whose  intellects  were  yet  balanced  by  their  hearts,  and  both 
absorbed  in  the  great  moral  agitation  of  the  age.  ...  In 
a  community  of  artists,  she  would  have  belonged  to  that 
class,  for  she  had  that  instinct  in  her  soul.  But  she  was 
placed  where  there  was  as  yet  no  exacting  literary  stand- 
ard ;  she  wrote  better  than  most  of  her  contemporaries, 
and  well  enough  for  the  public.  She  did  not,  therefore, 
win  that  intellectual  immortality  which  only  the  very  best 
writers  command  and  which  few  Americans  have  at- 
tained." 

The  career  of  Lydia  Sigourney,  the  versifier, 
illustrates  even  more  vividly  the  facility  of  those 
early  women  writers  as  well  as  the  way  in  which 


276  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

the  domestic-feminine  tradition  pervaded  and 
perverted  all  their  work.  One  of  her  earlier 
biographers  devoted  ten  out  of  his  fifteen  tedious 
pages  to  a  laudation  of  her  womanly  character, 
ending  with  this  paragraph: 

"  Yet  even  with  the  temptations  which  her  literary 
tastes  might  be  supposed  to  offer,  she  could  never  justly  be 
reproached  for  neglecting  any  home  duty  .  .  .  we  find 
her  at  the  head  of  her  household,  which  at  times  was 
large,  shrinking  from  no  burden  of  self-denial  needed  in 
her  work — living  to  see  her  two  stepdaughters  educated 
and  settled  in  life,  and  the  brother,  at  the  age  of  forty-five, 
consigned  to  a  consumptive's  grave;  to  educate  her  own 
daughter  and  son,  and  then,  just  on  the  verge  of  a  prom- 
ising manhood,  to  follow  him,  too,  to  his  grave;  to  give 
her  own  only  daughter  away  in  acceptable  marriage;  and 
then  to  settle  herself  down,  joyful  and  trustful  yet,  in  her 
own  home  .  .  .  until  her  own  change  should  come." 

Having  thus  forestalled  the  criticism  likely  to 
be  brought  against  this  harmless  literary  creature 
he  grudgingly  and  fearfully  adds: 

"  But,  doubtless,  it  will  be  as  a  literary  woman  that  she 
will  be  most  widely  known.  And  no  estimate  of  her 
career  which  leaves  out  of  account  the  character  and  value 
of  her  writings  can  do  justice  to  her  memory." 

Then,  at  last,  we  learn  why  she  should  have  a 
place  among  the  "  Eminent  Women  of  the  Age  "  : 
she  had  published  fifty-seven  volumes  of  prose 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  277 

and  verse;  of  newspaper  and  magazine  articles 
nearly  as  much  more;  and  for  several  years  had 
averaged  seventeen  hundred  letters  per  year, 
amounting  to  more  than  all  her  published  work; 
while  all  this  time  she  was  also  visiting  reform 
schools,  orphanages,  and  deaf-and-dumb  asylums, 
attending  to  church  duties,  raising  a  family  of 
children,  and  performing  every  required  fem- 
inine task.  In  truth,  the  modern  woman,  when 
she  thinks  herself  busy,  may  well  humble  herself 
before  such  a  combination  of  orthodox  woman- 
liness, diluted  talents,  and  prodigious  industry. 

If  it  was  natural  for  the  women  writers  of 
America  to  enter  romance  and  poetry  via  the 
kitchen  and  nursery,  it  was  not  less  inevitable  for 
them  to  experiment  in  the  field  of  journalism. 
Progressive  newspapers  and  periodicals,  if  not 
as  sensational  then  as  now,  were  just  as  eager 
to  get  something  novel.  The  chatty,  effusive, 
clever  copy  produced  by  women  of  quick  but 
superficial  and  untrained  minds  was  immediately 
recognized  as  having  a  popular  value;  while  the 
nom  de  plume  under  which  they  usually  wrote 
protected  them  from  the  direct  criticism  suffered 
by  women  more  conspicuously  out  of  their 
sphere. 

Mrs.  Parton,  although  three  times  married, 
wrote  a  series  of  "  Fern  Leaves,"  which  sold  into 
the  second  hundred  thousand;  and  punctually  fur- 


278  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

nished  the  New  York  Ledger  with  a  weekly  let- 
ter for  fourteen  years.  For  fear  "  her  practical 
and  democratic  genius  "  should  mislead  a  world 
suspicious  of  women  who  did  clever  things,  we 
are  told  that  she  sacrificed  the  latter  years  of 
her  life  to  a  little  granddaughter,  and  that 
"  whatever  masks  of  manly  independence,  pride, 
or  mocking  mischief  Fanny  Fern  may  put  on,  she 
is,  at  the  core  of  her  nature,  pure  womanly." 

Mrs.  Lippincott,  likewise,  wrote  "  Leaves " 
under  the  name  of  "  Grace  Greenwood,"  and  in 
the  forties  was  regarded  as  the  most  copious 
and  brilliant  lady  correspondent  of  the  day.  But 
the  manner  in  which  she  is  supposed  to  have  done 
it  assures  us  that  she,  too,  was  all  feminine: 

"  As  plain  Sara  Clarke,  she  had  helped  her  mother 
through  the  morning  work,  sweeping,  dusting,  watering 
flowers,  feeding  chickens,  sitting  down  for  a  few  moments 
to  read  two  stanzas  to  that  white-haired  father  of  hers. 
...  In  the  heat  of  midday  she  seeks  her  chamber,  gazes 
for  a  few  moments  with  the  look  of  a  lover  upon  the 
glorious  landscape,  then  dashes  off  a  column  for  The  Home 
Journal  or  The  National  Press." 

Mary  H.  Dodge,  better  known  as  "  Gail  Ham- 
ilton," although  apparently  as  feminine  in  nature 
as  the  others,  made  for  herself  a  somewhat 
unique  position  as  a  satirist.  Her  fluent  and 
vitriolic,  but,  on  the  whole,  just  satires  on  society, 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  279 

dress,  housekeeping,  men,  and  manners,  had  the 
quality,  rather  rare  among  the  earlier  advocates 
of  women's  rights,  of  presenting  the  masculine 
as  well  as  the  feminine  side,  and  on  that  account, 
perhaps,  produced  an  effect  quite  out  of  propor- 
tion to  their  literary  value. 

Two  other  women — Lydia  Child,  who  has  al- 
ready been  mentioned,  and  Margaret  Fuller — 
stand  on  a  far  more  dignified  plane,  and  their 
writings  constitute  a  part  of  the  history  of  Amer- 
ican letters  in  the  transcendental  epoch.  Mar- 
garet Fuller — because  of  her  now  acknowledged 
genius,  her  conspicuous  position  as  the  editor  of 
the  Dial,  her  keen,  prophetic  estimates  of  her  lit- 
erary contemporaries,  and  her  tragically  prema- 
ture fate — exhibits  more  than  any  other  the  lim- 
itations under  which  any  woman  of  talent  had  to 
struggle,  in  the  first  half  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century. 

Although  brought  up  in  the  most  cultivated 
city  in  America,  among  men  whose  literary  ideals 
have  dominated  our  literature  for  two  genera- 
tions, she  had  no  systematic  advantage  of  the 
higher  learning,  but  educated  herself  while  per- 
forming the  petty  duties  of  her  father's  house- 
hold. Just  as  she  was  about  to  undertake  writ- 
ing seriously,  her  father  died,  leaving  her  the 
practical  head  of  a  family  of  six,  and  with  very 
small  means.  Foreign  languages  being  the  most 


280  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

salable  of  her  accomplishments,  she  began  to 
teach,  and  at  the  same  time  to  translate  and  to 
publish  foreign  masterpieces.  Then  followed 
the  establishment  of  her  "  Conversations,"  the 
brief  editorial  work  on  the  Dial,  and  a  variety 
of  other  literary  products — travels,  romance,  and 
criticism.  According  to  Professor  Bates,  her 
literary  significance  does  not  chiefly  depend  upon 
her  actual  writings,  which  were  creditable  and 
suggestive  rather  than  symmetrical,  but  rather 
upon  her  "  inspirational  personality,"  which 
counted  for  more  than  her  best  paragraphs. 

"  She  was  not  an  artist  born,  and  her  education,  though 
pursued  at  high  pressure,  had  been  solitary  and  partial. 
It  is  no  part  of  Lowell's  greatness  to-day  that  he  show- 
ered with  sneering  witticisms  the  '  Miranda '  of  his 
Fable  for  Critics,  and  Hawthorne's  harsh  detractions  have 
redounded  to  his  discredit  rather  than  to  hers;  but  it  is 
permanently  to  the  praise  of  Emerson,  Higginson,  and 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  that,  beyond  plain  face  and  re- 
pellent bearing,  they  discerned  what  the  English  poet 
Landor  was  to  hail  as  '  a  glorious  soul.'  ' 

Margaret  Fuller's  estimates  of  men  and  lit- 
erature have  been  justified  for  the  most  part  by 
the  standards  of  a  later  time,  and  her  own  rela- 
tive position  as  a  writer  has  risen  rather  than 
declined.  But  one  aches  with  pity  to  see  the 
paucity  of  tools,  of  training,  of  opportunity,  and 
of  appreciation  under  which  a  creature  of  so 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  281 

much  power  had  to  find  expression.  Self-made 
and  marvelous  she  was,  indeed,  but  perverted  and 
far  short  of  her  best  ability  for  want  of  a  normal 
medium.  What  was  said  of  her  might  well  be 
applied  to  most  of  the  talented  women  of  that 
time: 

"  Literary  work  being  as  yet  crude  and  unorganized  in 
America,  the  public  takes  a  vague  delight  in  seeing  one 
person  do  a  great  many  different  things.  It  is  like  hear- 
ing a  street  musician  perform  on  six  instruments  at  once; 
he  plays  them  all  ill,  but  it  is  so  remarkable  that  he 
should  play  them  together." 

Whatever  controversy  there  may  be  about  the 
incubation  of  genius,  the  conditions  necessary  to 
the  development  of  talent  are  tolerably  well 
settled.  Among  men,  literary  achievement  has 
usually  had  a  prepared,  one  might  say  a 
prophetic,  atmosphere;  it  has  found  somehow  its 
opportune  moment;  for,  as  Professor  Lester 
Ward  long  ago  pointed  out,  there  may  have  been 
many  Napoleons  born,  but  the  capacity  of  all  but 
one  remained  latent  for  want  of  the  right  con- 
junction of  circumstances.  Talent,  indeed,  needs 
training  in  technique  and  the  habit  of  mental 
concentration,  while  literary  gifts,  above  all, 
need  emotional  stimulation  and  experience  of 
life. 

Of   all   the   literary   women   before   the   Civil 


282  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

War,  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  attained  the  highest 
mark;  yet  the  conditions  under  which  her  talent 
came  to  fruition  were  by  no  means  favorable. 
Born  in  New  England,  if  she  had  remained  there 
she  would  have  been  an  abolitionist,  no  doubt, 
says  Higginson;  but  she  would  probably  not  have 
written  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin!  Although  reared 
in  a  cultivated  and  brilliant  family,  it  was  an  at- 
mosphere far  more  congenial  to  philosophical 
discussion  than  to  the  creative  imagination. 
Married  early,  and  heavily  weighted  with  poverty 
and  motherhood;  without  any  chance  for  isola- 
tion or  continuous  thinking;  she  found  only  one 
thing  to  give  her  talent  impetus — the  moral  issue 
of  slavery.  Compare  the  equipment  and  the  con- 
ditions of  Mrs.  Stowe  with  that  of  her  distin- 
guished contemporaries,  Lowell,  Emerson,  or 
Longfellow,  who  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  high- 
est culture  and  liberal  letters,  undistracted  by 
babies,  cooking,  dishwashing,  and  family  nurs- 
ing; who  were,  moreover,  encouraged  by  their 
fellows,  and  in  line  with  the  accepted  conventions 
of  the  masculine  world!  But  for  the  exceptional 
and  almost  accidental  circumstance  that  Pro- 
fessor Stowe  sympathized  with  his  wife's  literary 
aspirations,  it  is  probable  that  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  could  not  have  been  written.  Even  so,  we 
are  told  that  it  had  to  be  produced  "  under  griev- 
ous burdens  and  disadvantages  .  .  .  much  of  it 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  283 

actually  written  as  she  sat  with  her  portfolio  on 
her  knee  by  the  kitchen  fire  in  moments  snatched 
from  domestic  cares." 

But  Mrs.  Stowe,  above  all  the  women  of  her 
day,  was  fortunate  in  having  a  subject  that  burned 
within  her — a  topic  not  purely  feminine,  but  of 
tremendous  and  world-wide  interest.  For  this 
once  she  emerged  into  one  of  the  luminous  mo- 
ments of  history,  and  not  even  her  conventional 
sex  limitations  could  suppress  the  power  of  her 
moral  vision.  In  spite  of  an  uncertain  touch, 
and  though  her  mind  was,  perhaps,  neither  very 
strong  nor  profound,  the  conjunction  of  an 
artistic  impulse  and  vital  emotion  with  the  golden 
moment  of  her  opportunity  makes  her  still,  after 
more  than  half  a  century,  one  of  the  foremost 
literary  figures  of  her  time.  Nor  does  it  lessen 
her  preeminence  that  the  picturesqueness  of  the 
negro  and  the  evangelical  flavor  of  her  chief 
story  have  carried  it  among  readers  to  whom  the 
moral  issue  of  slavery  was  of  minor  interest. 
Cooper  and  Helen  Hunt  Jackson  both  owed  as 
much  to  the  Indian;  and  many  a  best-seller  of 
modern  times  would  drop  dead  on  the  market  but 
for  its  conventional  religious  appeal. 

The  majority  even  of  the  best  equipped 
women  of  that  earlier  day  had  so  little  intellectual 
stimulus  and  so  little  experience  of  life  outside  of 
domesticity,  that  they  were  perforce  confined  to 


284  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

purely  feminine  topics  or  to  the  current  plati- 
tudes of  ethics  and  religion.  The  tradition  that 
a  thinking,  and  still  more  a  speaking,  woman  was 
dangerous  to  society,  checked  any  natural  tend- 
ency to  choose  more  vital  and  picturesque  sub- 
jects. While  educated  men  in  the  more  refined 
circles  sometimes  encouraged  their  women  friends 
to  write,  they  rarely  urged  them  to  go  farther 
than  the  fields  of  harmlessly  "  pure  "  literature. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  striking  and  almost  uniform 
characteristics  of  these  early  literary  amateurs, 
is  their  dependence  upon  a  father  or  a  husband 
for  their  "  atmosphere."  Those  who  married 
educated  men — like  Mrs.  Sigourney,  Mrs.  Lamb, 
Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  Mrs.  Howe,  Luella  Smith, 
Maria  Child — found  in  the  backing  given  by  their 
husbands  something  to  neutralize  the  unfriendly 
attitude  of  a  world  which  still  looked  coldly  upon 
an  unprotected  woman  who  undertook  any  un- 
usual work. 

The  married  woman  whose  husband  was  sym- 
pathetic and  encouraging  to  her  intellectual  aims 
was,  by  so  much,  better  off  than  those  who  faced 
the  disapproval  of  the  world  alone.  For  self- 
doubt  is  infinitely  more  dangerous  to  the  creative 
faculty  than  any  public  censure,  and  the  women 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  were  brought  up  in 
the  belief  that  for  a  woman  to  compete  with 
credit  in  the  world  of  art  and  intellect  was  as  ab- 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  285 

normal  as  for  a  dog  to  walk  erect — and  far  less 
possible. 

"  The  literary  women  of  America  before  Mar- 
garet Fuller,"  says  Professor  Bates,  "  pursued 
their  quest  of  truth  or  beauty  with  all  feminine 
timidity;"  and  then,  with  humorous  touch,  she 
describes  "  the  craven  air  of  Hannah  Adams, 
who  had  toiled  over  bookmaking  all  her  apolo- 
getic days,  who,  with  eyes  grown  dim,  was  look- 
ing wistfully  toward  heaven  as  a  place  where  she 
might  find  her  thirst  for  knowledge  fully  grati- 
fied." Anything  was  easier  for  the  unprotected 
woman  than  to  combat  the  age-long  standards  of 
her  world,  and  therefore  only  those  driven  by  ir- 
repressible talent  or  by  economic  necessity  were 
likely  to  make  a  venture  into  fields  hitherto  un- 
traversed  by  their  sex.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  a 
very  considerable  number  of  the  first  feminine  at- 
tempts in  American  literature  were  made  under 
the  menace  of  poverty  into  which  women  of 
talent  were  thrown  by  the  loss  of  a  father  or 
husband.  The  avenues  of  self-support  for  cul- 
tivated women  were  so  thorny  and  so  few  that 
plain  necessity  drove  such  as  Mrs.  Southworth, 
Amelia  Barr,  Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  the  two 
Carys,  Maria  Wright,  and  many  others,  to  writ- 
ing as  a  means  of  livelihood. 

Sometimes  women  of  ability  were  diverted  into 
writing  merely  because  they  could  get  no  training 


286  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

or  opportunity  for  the  development  of  less  com- 
mon talents;  as  in  the  case  of  the  energetic  and 
versatile  Amanda  Douglas  who,  after  a  hard 
life  on  the  farm  and  without  a  chance  to  study 
designing  and  engraving  which  she  loved,  wrote 
a  lot  of  poor  novels  and  stories.  Or,  like  Mrs. 
Dodge  who,  diverted  by  marriage  from  the  study 
of  sculpture,  afterwards  produced  a  children's 
classic  in  the  little  book,  Hans  Brinker,  and,  while 
editor  of  St.  Nicholas,  much  other  prose  and 
verse. 

The  current  histories  of  American  literature, 
dealing  chiefly  with  the  writers  who  attained  dis- 
tinction before  the  last  quarter  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  differ  widely  both  quantitatively  and 
qualitatively  in  their  estimate  of  the  place  of 
women;  but  they  are  substantially  agreed  that  no 
woman  had  reached  first  rank  in  any  line  of 
literature  at  the  National  Era.  One  author  men- 
tions only  a  scant  half-dozen  in  seventy-five 
years,  granting  to  two  of  them,  Margaret  Fuller 
Ossoli  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  exceptional 
merit;  another  expands  the  list  to  a  dozen,  giv- 
ing them  a  creditable  place  in  the  second  and 
third  ranks  of  literary  achievement.  A  third, 
both  more  inclusive  and  more  discriminating, 
finds  no  more  than  thirty  women  before  1890 
whose  productions  contributed  anything  of  real 
significance  to  the  history  of  American  Letters. 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  287 

Measured  quantitatively,  women  writers  were 
from  one-tenth  to  one-fourth  as  many  as  men; 
qualitatively,  few  reached  even  the  secondary 
rank,  and  none  at  all  the  first.  Among  the 
greater  names  in  the  National  Era  of  our  litera- 
ture— Bryant,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes, 
Emerson,  and  Whittier — no  woman  appears;  and 
yet  fifty  years  afterward  there  was  scarcely  a 
field  of  writing  in  which  some  woman  had  not 
attained  an  excellent  secondary  rank,  and  in  a  few 
they  were  standing  side  by  side  with  men. 

Looking  back  over  that  period  in  which  the 
domestic-feminine  traditions  were  being  broken 
down,  it  is  easy  to  see  why  amateurs  of  both 
sexes  produced  at  first  so  much  that  was  crude 
and  trivial,  sentimental  and  unreal,  stilted  in 
tone  and  lacking  in  form.  All  the  criticisms  on 
the  writings  of  women  before  1875  had  been 
applied  with  equal  force  two  generations  earlier 
to  the  productions  of  American  men  of  letters. 
English  and  American  critics  vie  with  each 
other  in  pointing  out  the  provincialism,  the  lack 
of  originality  and  power.  In  truth,  precisely  the 
same  causes  which  had  delayed  the  development 
of  men  in  literature,  operated  through  a  longer 
period  and  with  greater  force  to  prevent  women 
from  producing  anything  of  permanent  value. 
It  was  said  that  American  men  lacked  contact  with 
the  great  minds  of  all  ages — but  women  experi- 


288  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

enced  the  lack  to  a  far  greater  degree.  Harvard 
College  alone  educated  three  out  of  five  of  the 
foremost  literary  men  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
and  opened  the  door  into  the  wider  atmosphere  of 
universal  thought  to  a  thousand  more,  long  be- 
fore any  woman  had  so  much  as  put  her  foot  upon 
the  threshold  of  any  real  seat  of  higher  learning. 
Although  nearly  all  the  women  writers  were 
credited  by  their  biographers  with  an  unusual  love 
of  books,  their  writings  show,  as  did  those  of  men 
who  made  the  first  attempts,  a  painful  deficiency 
in  literary  technique.  It  is  certainly  not  without 
significance  that  only  sixty  of  the  four  hundred 
and  eighty-seven  women  authors  who  attained 
mention  in  the  Who's  Who  of  1901-2  had  a  col- 
lege training,  while  among  the  distinguished  men 
of  every  class,  two-thirds  had  taken  college  de- 
grees. The  literary  women,  therefore,  must 
have  been  educated — if  at  all,  beyond  the  gram- 
mar grade — by  self-trained  teachers  in  inferior 
schools,  where  the  "  ornamental  "  were  sub- 
stituted for  the  "  solid "  branches.  Most  of 
them  satisfied  their  intellectual  hunger  by  miscel- 
laneous reading  and  study,  and  missed  entirely 
the  give-and-take  by  which  men  whetted  their 
minds  on  each  other's  knowledge.  The  taste  for 
serious  reading  and  culture  which  must  be  ac- 
quired early  in  life,  if  at  all,  was  encouraged  in 
boys  destined  for  a  profession — but  never  in 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  289 

girls.  We  are  told  that  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
Holmes,  and  Lowell  were  "  bred  to  cultivation 
by  cultivated  parents,"  and  had  "  tumbled  about 
in  libraries."  It  illuminates,  if  it  does  not  wholly 
explain,  the  voluminous  and  relatively  feeble  re- 
sults achieved  by  the  earlier  women,  to  remem- 
ber that  the  very  few  who  attained  a  place,  also 
lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  higher  culture.  Mar- 
garet Fuller  and  Lydia  Child  shared  to  some  ex- 
tent, though  indirectly,  the  inspirational  influences 
of  Cambridge;  Harriet  Beecher  was  reared  in 
the  stimulating  circle  of  a  brilliant  family  and  an 
intellectual  coterie;  and  Emily  Dickinson,  recluse 
though  she  was,  could  not  escape  the  mental  im- 
petus of  a  professor's  household. 

They  were  all  deficient  in  technique  in  propor- 
tion to  their  deficiencies  in  mental  training;  still 
more,  in  breadth  of  view  in  consequence  of  their 
narrow  life  experience.  "  Words  wait  on 
thought  and  thought  on  life."  The  difference  be- 
tween the  occasional  woman  who  reached  a  kind 
of  literary  eminence,  and  the  larger  number  who 
are  quite  forgotten  now  by  all  but  the  literary  his- 
torian, seems  to  lie  rather  in  the  degree  of  cul- 
ture and  of  life  experience  than  in  any  perceptible 
difference  in  native  ability.  It  may  be  that  we 
owe  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  to  the  fact  that  a  New 
England  woman  was  transplanted  to  a  Western 
border  state,  and  set  down  where  the  tragedies  of 


290  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

the  fugitive  slave  law  gave  her  talent  a  concrete 
impulse;  and,  perhaps,  the  accidental  circum- 
stance of  life  in  California  gave  to  the  author  of 
Ramona  her  first  effective  contact  with  the  real 
life  of  the  world.  Certain  it  is  that,  in  addition 
to  the  artistic  gift  and  the  hunger  for  ideal  ex- 
pression in  words,  there  must  be  the  stuff  of 
vital  experience  with  which  to  work;  and  of  this, 
women,  by  the  very  stationary  and  domestic  con- 
dition of  their  lives,  had  almost  nothing  as  com- 
pared with  men,  and  even  yet  have  immeasurably 
less. 

The  early  female  writers  were,  too,  like  their 
masculine  forerunners,  caught  fast  in  a  saccharine 
slough  of  sentiment  and  piety  which  in  itself  de- 
stroyed all  freedom  of  thought  and  originality 
of  method.  The  cheerful  Carys  wrote  dismal 
stanzas  of  death  and  despair,  affecting  what  they 
could  not  feel.  The  "  exemplary  "  Mrs.  Sigour- 
ney,  "  phenomenon  rather  than  an  author,"  com- 
posed verse — while  knitting  socks  for  the  family 
— in  which  were  commemorated  in  the  approved 
lachrymose  phrases,  the  funerals,  baptisms,  and 
weddings  in  the  circle  of  her  friends.  The  most 
successful  of  the  women  story-writers  invariably 
combined  sentiment  and  religious  emotionality 
upon  a  commonplace  domestic  background.  As 
Professor  Trent  has  pointed  out,  there  was  not  a 
trace  of  romantic  interest,  and  the  style  was  in- 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  291 

evitably  mediocre  and  didactic;  but  whether  they 
portrayed  the  fortunes  of  an  orphan  girl  rescued 
from  low  life,  or  the  conscientious  struggles  of  a 
schoolgirl  vibrating  between  tears  and  prayers, 
such  fiction  could  be  safely  recommended  by 
pastors  to  their  flocks  as  proper  mental  and 
spiritual  pabulum. 

Though  women  writers  had  no  monopoly  of 
this  "  milk  and  water "  literature,  the  middle- 
class  standard  set  for  them  was  one  more  weight 
to  hold  them  back  from  beholding  or  attempting 
better  things.  In  writing,  as  in  every  other 
effort,  though  less  consciously,  they  were  coerced 
by  the  tradition  of  the  inferiority  of  the  fem- 
inine intellect.  Since  the  province  of  women- 
kind  was  feeling  rather  than  thinking,  they  felt 
themselves  incompetent  outside  the  realm  of 
didactic  poetry  and  fiction.  The  literary  men  of 
an  earlier  time  had  been  under  a  similar  thrall 
through  Puritanism,  but  they  had  been  sooner 
emancipated  into  the  air  of  world-culture  with- 
out which  literature  is  seldom  created. 

In  addition  to  all  the  other  limitations  of  su- 
perficial education,  and  absence  of  intellectual 
atmosphere,  opportunity,  and  stimulus,  women 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  had  still  another,  self- 
distrust,  which  in  itself  would  almost  account  for 
their  meager  representation  in  the  literature  of 
the  national  era.  To  man  all  things  are  sup- 


292  LITERARY  AMATEURS 

posedly  possible,  but  nothing  intellectual  was  then 
believed  to  be  possible  to  woman;  and  when,  here 
and  there,  against  great  odds,  some  woman  rose 
above  her  sex-limitations,  compelling  recognition, 
it  was  set  down  as  merely  exceptional,  not  char- 
acteristic nor  attainable  by  her  kind.  The  very 
essence  of  genius  is  supreme  confidence  in  what 
one  has  to  say.  A  distinguished  actress,  in  dis- 
cussing the  fact  that  plays  are  generally  written 
by  men,  has  lately  said: 

"  Because  they  are  so  tremendously  clever  and  such  tre- 
mendous egotists — that's  why  men  write  greater  things 
than  women — they  are  capable  of  such  limitless  belief  in 
themselves.  All  the  great  creators  were  so — egotists  all." 

To  all  the  disadvantages  under  which  men  of 
literary  talent  had  risen  and  sunk  in  America, 
women  added  self-distrust  created  by  the  hostil- 
ity of  a  society  pervaded  by  the  strict  domestic 
traditions  of  femininity.  And,  moreover,  the 
woman  of  talent  was  often  paralyzed  not  merely 
by  the  common  assumption  that  her  mind  must 
be  inferior,  but  by  her  own  fear  that  she  was 
morally  wrong  in  feeding  her  slender  flame. 

No  sooner  had  the  tradition  of  mental  inferi- 
ority been  broken,  the  doors  of  culture  opened 
into  the  universe,  and  the  attention  of  a  reading 
public  attained,  than  there  appeared  talented 
women  by  the  score  who,  in  a  single  generation, 


LITERARY  AMATEURS  293 

and  though  still  handicapped,  earned  a  wide  and 
creditable  reputation  for  serious  literary  work. 
As  yet,  it  does  not  appear  how  far  they  may  go, 
nor  to  what  degree  their  achievements  will  be 
colored  by  sex-experience.  But  in  the  space  of 
half  a  century  they  have  gone  so  far  that  the 
tale  of  such  crude,  effeminate,  and  imitative  ef- 
forts as  their  sex  once  timidly  made,  already 
sounds  far  off  and  strange. 


SECTION  IV 

FROM   FEMININITY   TO  WOMAN- 
HOOD 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE   SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

"  I  consider  it  presumptuous  in  any  one  to  pretend  to  decide 
what  women  are  or  are  not,  can  or  cannot  be,  by  natural  con- 
stitution. They  have  always  hitherto  been  kept,  as  far  as  re- 
gards spontaneous  development,  in  so  unnatural  a  state  that 
their  nature  cannot  but  have  been  greatly  distorted  and  dis- 
guised, and  no  one  can  safely  pronounce,  that  if  woman's  nature 
were  left  to  choose  its  direction  as  freely  as  men's,  and  if  no 
artificial  bent  were  attempted  to  be  given  to  it  except  that  re- 
quired by  the  conditions  of  human  society,  and  given  to  both 
sexes  alike,  there  would  be  any  material  difference,  or,  perhaps, 
any  difference  at  all,  in  the  character  and  capacities  which 
•would  unfold  themselves." — JOHN  STUART  MILL. 

"  We  are  probably  in  about  the  same  position  and  stage  with 
reference  to  the  questions  of  sex  as  were  the  men  of  the 
eighteenth  century  with  reference  to  the  question  of  evolution." — 
LESTER  F.  WARD. 

IN  discussing  the  difference  between  men  and 
women,  the  words  "  male  "  and  "  female  "  are 
perfectly  definite,  but  in  the  related  terms  "  mas- 
culine "  and  "  feminine  "  there  is  included  a  large 
number  of  physical,  mental,  and  social  character- 
istics which  are  variable  and  unstable,  sometimes 
capable  of  a  precise  description,  but  oftener  as 
accidental  and  temporary  as  the  fashions  of  the 
times.  The  scientists  who  have  tried  to  measure 

297 


298     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

women  by  the  physical  and  mental  standards  of 
men  quite  frankly  admit  that,  beyond  the  primary 
sex  differences,  and  a  very  few  permanent  sec- 
ondary qualities,  there  is  a  vast  debatable  area 
of  variation  which  must  engage  the  attention  of 
future  investigators.  There  is  no  debate  about 
the  significance  of  a  smooth  face  in  women  and 
of  a  beard  in  men,  nor  about  the  contrasting 
timbre  of  their  voices,  but  whether  the  fact  that 
women  have  fewer  red  corpuscles  than  men  sig- 
nifies that  they  are  a  feebler  race,  or  merely  less 
developed  than  men  in  our  age  and  time,  is  an 
open  question. 

Whether  less  sensitiveness  to  pain  and  greater 
sensitiveness  to  emotions  on  the  part  of  woman 
indicates  an  ineradicable  difference  of  nerve 
centers,  or  merely  of  conventional  training; 
whether  she  was  born  unstable  and  changeable, 
or  made  so  by  the  limitations  of  her  life — these 
and  similar  disputes  have  been  settled,  only  to  be 
unsettled  soon  afterward  by  equally  scientific 
authority.  In  such  a  conspicuous  matter  as  men- 
tality the  dogmatisms  of  research  with  regard 
to  the  inferior  brain  capacity  and  intellectual 
products  of  women,  were  scarcely  uttered  before 
they  became  untenable  by  reason  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  women  themselves — at  first  of  a  few 
brilliant  exceptions  only,  and  shortly  afterwards, 
of  an  increasing  number  as  education  and  oppor- 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     299 

tunity  were  extended  to  them.  As  a  current 
journal  humorously  puts  it:  women  have  lived  to 
do  everything  that  it  was  said  they  could  not  do, 
except  grow  whiskers. 

It  is  only  a  short  time — as  progress  goes— 
since  men  as  far-seeing  as  Darwin  and  Huxley 
held  that  the  "  intuitive  "  or  "  womanly  "  quality 
of  mind,  the  quick  perception,  and  rapid  imita- 
tion characteristic  of  women,  put  them  in  the 
same  category  with  bygone  civilizations  and  the 
lower  races.  But  from  the  time  that  Buckle 
showed  that  the  most  important  discoveries  of 
modern  time  have  resulted  from  the  deductive 
method,  that  is,  from  the  feminine  habit  of  mind, 
there  has  been  an  increasing  tendency  to  believe 
that  imagination  and  intuition  were  effecting 
quite  as  much  progress  as  the  logical  understand- 
ing. Certainly  there  is  a  consensus  of  opinion 
among  modern  psychologists  and  sociologists  in 
placing  higher  value  upon  the  very  mental  quality 
which  was  not  long  ago  held  to  establish  finally 
woman's  inferiority. 

The  ground  of  the  disputes  over  the  qualities 
and  capacity  of  women  has  come  to  lie  quite  out- 
side the  primary  sex-functions,  or  even  the  sec- 
ondary sex  characters,  which  were  evolved  ap- 
parently to  insure  reproduction.  Indeed,  the 
characteristics  in  dispute  range  from  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  larger  thyroid  gland  in  the  human 


300     'SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

female  to  the  effect  of  voting  on  her  loyalty  to 
domestic  duty — from  the  investigation  of  her 
senses  to  the  causes  of  divorce.  In  short,  it  is 
no  longer  a  question  of  what  women  could  or 
could  not  do  if  they  had  an  equal  chance,  but  of 
what  is  likely  to  be  the  effect  of  their  trying  to  do, 
under  a  handicap,  whatever  they  have  the  cour- 
age to  attempt.  In  our  present  stage,  the  con- 
clusions as  to  the  permanence  or  significance  of 
any  feminine  peculiarity  at  which  any  observer 
will  arrive  are  in  accordance  usually  with  his 
habitual  anti-  or  pro-feminine  bias.  In  this  re- 
spect, the  discussion  resembles  the  attempt  to  de- 
termine species  and  sub-species  in  natural  history. 
In  any  large  number  of  specimens  there  are  al- 
ways some  on  the  border-line;  whether  these  will 
be  named  as  new  species  or  relegated  to  a  lower 
place  as  sub-species  or  varieties,  depends  almost 
wholly  on  the  personal  idiosyncrasy  of  the 
naturalist. 

In  some  aspects  the  woman-questions  are 
analogous  to  race  questions.  We  know  tolerably 
well  what  degree  of  civilization  the  darker  races 
have  attained  in  their  native  habitats;  but  there  is 
very  little  accurate,  unbiased  information  as  to 
the  degree  and  conditions  of  the  progress  which 
any  of  these  races  has  made  in  other  climates, 
and  under  the  stimulus  of  new  environments. 
Only  two  decades  ago  it  was  confidently  predicted 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     301 

on  scientific  grounds  that  the  Hawaiian  race 
would  shortly  die  out;  but  their  increasing  birth- 
rate and  decreasing  death-rate  may  now  portend  a 
chance  of  survival.  Nor  has  the  last  word  been 
said  concerning  their  ultimate  contribution  to 
civilization,  since  the  Hawaiian-Chinese  half- 
breed  youth  have  lately  surpassed  all  others  in 
the  local  schools. 

An  even  more  striking  instance  of  premature 
condemnation  of  an  apparently  static  race  is  af- 
forded by  the  Chinese.  It  is  scarcely  half  a  cen- 
tury since  China  was  an  unknown  country,  and 
the  Chinese — to  our  complacent  view — a  weird, 
incredible,  uncivilized  people;  yet  in  that  time 
China  has  risen  to  be  one  of  the  greater  powers, 
and  is,  moreover,  on  the  verge  of  developing  sud- 
denly, out  of  her  village  democracies,  a  mod- 
ern constitutional  government  or  republic.  The 
guesses  as  to  the  Chinese  capacity  for  progress 
have  been  favorable  or  unfavorable  according  to 
the  critic's  degree  of  instinctive  race  prejudice, 
and  his  equipment  of  hearsay  or  first-hand  in- 
formation. Surely,  if  in  so  short  a  time  the 
"  Heathen  Chinee  "  can  rise  to  be  a  progressive 
human  being  in  our  estimation,  it  is  not  impossible 
that  women  may  become  social  entities,  whose  ac- 
quired "  femininity  "  may  be  modifying  faster 
than  the  carefully  digested  ideas  of  scientific  ob- 
servers. 


302     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

After  a  round  century  of  discussion  and  in- 
vestigation, the  real  crux  of  the  woman  question 
is  still  whether  some  of  the  so-called  secondary 
and  all  of  the  tertiary  sex  characters  are  inherent 
and  relatively  permanent,  or  whether  they  are 
merely  temporary  variations  due  to  environ- 
mental and  social  causes.  Granting  that  male- 
ness  and  femaleness  are  fundamental  and,  in  the 
higher  orders  of  life,  unchangeable  after  birth, 
are  the  peculiarities  comprised  in  what  is  called 
"femininity"  and  "masculinity"  equally  fixed? 
For  a  good  many  hundred  years  it  has  been 
assumed  that  they  were  unalterable,  but  the 
discoveries  in  biology  and  the  rise  of  democratic 
theory  have  together  undermined  this  as  well  as 
many  other  dogmas. 

One  of  the  most  surprising  results  of  this 
change  in  thinking  about  women  is,  that  while 
the  number  of  qualities  denominated  "  strictly 
feminine  "  has  been  rapidly  diminishing,  mas- 
culinity has  remained  in  the  minds  of  most  peo- 
ple, until  quite  recently,  a  fixed  congeries  of  char- 
acteristics. Yet  one  has  only  to  catalogue  the 
men  of  his  acquaintance  to  realize  that  manliness 
is  scarcely  a  more  definite  conception  than  woman- 
liness. Professor  Sargent  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity is  quoted  as  having  said  recently  that  the 
modern  youth  is  rapidly  approaching  effeminacy 
and  the  modern  girl  masculinity,  in  their  physical 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     303 

type.  Professor  Gayley  of  the  University  of 
California  about  the  same  time  characterized 
the  male  college  student  as  follows : 


"Busy  to  no  purpose,  imitative,  aimless;  boastful  but 
unreliant;  inquisitive,  but  quickly  losing  interest;  fitful, 
inconsequential,  platitudinous,  forgetful;  noisy,  sudden,  in- 
effectual." 

Curiously  enough,  the  adjectives — with,  per- 
haps, the  exception  of  u  boastful  " — are  precisely 
the  ones  applied  to  women.  Professor  Wood- 
worth,  the  entomologist  of  the  University  of 
California,  goes  much  farther  in  his  views  of  the 
possible  changes  in  sex-function.  He  suggests 
that  we  may  be  approaching  a  new  social  adjust- 
ment like  that  of  the  ant-colony,  where,  in  cer- 
tain members  of  both  sexes,  the  reproductive 
function  will  be  subordinated  to  other  forms  of 
efficiency.  Altogether,  the  present  views  of  sci- 
entific men  are  so  contradictory  and  so  revolu- 
tionary, and  the  type  of  domestic  womanhood 
is  differentiating  so  fast  and  in  so  many  unex- 
pected directions,  that  no  one  can  safely  commit 
himself  to  any  dogmatic  statement  beyond  the 
fact  that  whatever  babies  are  born  in  the  future 
will  still  be  born  of  woman. 

To  the  discussion  of  feminine  possibilities  the 
evolutionary  scientists  have  made,  so  far,  the 


304     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

most  important  contributions — perhaps  because 
they  may  know  better  than  other  thinkers  the 
stultifying  nature  of  dogmatism  and  the  danger 
of  prophecy.  The  feminist  movement,  though 
begun  in  a  period  when  it  was  expected  that 
science  would  prove  that  woman  had  been  and 
eternally  must  be  inferior  to  man,  has  ended  by 
showing  that  most  of  the  things  formerly  as- 
sumed are  either  not  so  or,  at  any  rate,  question- 
able. Starting  at  this  point,  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury observer  must  ask:  why  are  women  as  they 
are?  The  thoughtful  person  who  sees  what  the 
semi-feudal,  almost  unreasoning  peasant  of 
Eighteenth-Century  Europe  has  become  in  this 
country,  under  the  stimulus  of  wider  economic 
opportunities,  and  relieved  from  the  pressure  of 
militarism,  may  properly  hesitate  to  predict  what 
womankind  might  be  with  an  equal  liberation  and 
as  strong  an  impetus. 

It  might,  perhaps,  be  asserted  that  the  distance 
between  the  two  extremes  of  opinion  as  to  sex 
capacity  is  now  generally  in  inverse  proportion  to 
the  amount  of  exact  knowledge  of  its  mani- 
festants.  Certainly  the  sociologists  who  have 
taken  the  most  pains  to  test  out  their  material 
carefully  are  the  least  dogmatic  as  to  what  may 
be  expected  of  women.  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis, 
after  a  thorough  examination  of  all  the  available 
data  on  sex  characters,  reached  most  inconclusive 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     305 

results,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  para- 
graphs : 

"  We  have  to  recognize  that  our  present  knowledge 
of  men  and  women  cannot  tell  us  what  they  might  be  or 
what  they  ought  to  be,  but  what  they  actually  are,  under 
the  varying  conditions  of  civilization.  By  showing  us 
that  under  varying  conditions  men  and  women  are,  within 
certain  limits,  indefinitely  modifiable,  a  precise  knowledge 
of  the  exact  facts  of  the  life  of  men  and  women  forbids  us 
to  dogmatize  rigidly  concerning  the  respective  spheres  of 
men  and  women.  It  is  a  matter  which  experience  alone 
can  demonstrate  in  detail.  .  .  .  The  small  group  of 
women  who  wish  to  prove  the  absolute  inferiority  of  the 
male  sex,  the  larger  group  of  men  who  wish  to  circum- 
scribe rigidly  the  sphere  of  woman,  must  alike  be  ruled  out 
of  court.  .  .  . 

'  The  facts  are  far  too  complex  to  enable  us  to  rush 
hastily  to  a  conclusion  as  to  their  significance.  The  facts, 
moreover,  are  so  numerous  that  even  when  we  have  ascer- 
tained the  precise  significance  of  some  one  fact,  we  cannot 
be  sure  that  it  is  not  contradicted  by  other  facts.  And  so 
many  of  the  facts  are  modified  under  a  changing  environ- 
ment that  in  the  absence  of  experience  we  cannot  pro- 
nounce definitely  regarding  the  behavior  of  either  the 
male  or  the  female  organisms  under  different  conditions. 
There  is  but  one  tribunal  wrhose  sentence  is  final  and 
without  appeal.  Only  Nature  can  pronounce  the 
legitimacy  of  social  modifications.  The  sentence  may  be 
sterility  or  death,  but  no  other  tribunal,  no  appeal  to  com- 
mon-sense, will  serve  instead." 

The  contemporary  psychologists,  as  well, 
speak  in  a  very  different  tone  from  those  of  a 


3o6     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

generation  past — both  less  dogmatically  and  more 
hopefully  as  regards  what  the  feminine  mind  is 
capable  of.  Quite  recently,  in  a  discussion  of 
co-education,  Professor  John  Dewey  wrote: 

"  Upon  no  subject  has  there  been  so  much  dogmatic  as- 
sertion, based  upon  so  little  scientific  evidence,  as  upon  the 
male  and  female  types  of  mind.  We  know  that  traits  are 
transmitted  from  grandfather  to  grandson  through  the 
mother,  even  the  traits  most  specific  in  nature.  This,  with 
other  accessible  facts,  demonstrates  that  such  differences 
of  mental  characteristics  as  exist  are  those  of  arrangement, 
proportion,  and  emphasis,  rather  than  of  kind  and  quality. 
Moreover,  it  is  scientifically  demonstrable  that  the  aver- 
age difference  between  men  and  women  is  much  less  than 
the  individual  difference  among  either  men  or  women 
themselves." 

As  the  conclusion  of  a  recent  examination  into 
"  The  Mental  Traits  of  Sex,"  Helen  B.  Thomp- 
son says: 

"  The  point  to  be  emphasized  as  the  outcome  of  this 
study  is,  that,  according  to  our  present  light,  the  psycho- 
logical differences  of  sex  seem  to  be  largely  due,  not  to 
difference  of  average  capacity  nor  to  difference  in  type  of 
mental  activity,  but  to  the  difference  in  the  social  in- 
fluences brought  to  bear  on  the  developing  individual  from 
early  infancy  to  adult  years.  The  question  of  the  future 
development  of  the  intellectual  life  of  women  is  one  of 
social  necessities  and  ideals  rather  than  of  the  inborn 
psychological  characteristics  of  sex." 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     307 

In  the  examination  of  female  sex  character- 
istics, the  working  hypothesis  of  the  early  Nine- 
teenth Century  was  that  these  were  nearly  all 
fundamental,  and,  therefore,  unchangeable;  but 
the  scientists,  in  the  course  of  developing  the  evo- 
lutionary theory,  have  compiled  a  great  array  of 
facts,  showing  that  some  of  these  are  much  less 
fixed  than  others;  and  that  some,  once  supposed 
to  be  immutable,  never  existed  except  in  abnormal 
persons.  Take,  for  instance,  the  conspicuous 
case  of  women's  respiration,  declared  by  Dr. 
Hutchinson  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  to  be 
costal,  and,  therefore,  quite  different  from  the 
abdominal  type  of  man.  For  a  hundred  years  this 
was  taught  as  a  physiological  fact;  and  yet,  in 
1896,  Dr.  Clelia  D.  Mosher  of  Stanford  Uni- 
versity, and  Dr.  Fitz  of  Harvard,  overturned 
simultaneously  this  "  fact "  by  more  accurate 
data,  and  the  physiologies  now  state  that, 
normally,  women  and  men  breathe  alike. 

The  views  of  physiologists  with  regard  to  so 
deep-seated  a  limitation  as  the  menstrual  func- 
tion are  rapidly  changing.  The  idea  of  the 
"  curse  upon  woman,"  as  developed  by  religious 
dogma,  and  the  vulgar  superstitions  arising  from 
it,  have  been  displaced  by  the  acceptance  of  men- 
struation as  a  perfectly  normal  function;  and  the 
incapacity  which  has  often  accompanied  it  in  civ- 


3o8     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

ilized  woman  is — according  to  the  latest  medical 
dictum — as  remediable  by  education  and  correct 
habits  as  other  functional  disorders. 

Between  the  Eighteenth  and  the  Twentieth 
Centuries,  the  ground  of  debate  regarding  women 
has  been  gradually  shifting  from  sex  character- 
istics to  the  effect  of  the  social  environment  upon 
women  in  producing  perversion  and  limitation  of 
character.  Now,  in  all  this  series  of  assump- 
tions, re-examinations  of  data,  discovery  of  new 
facts,  and  making  of  new  hypotheses,  only  a  few 
women  have  appeared  to  give  direct  testimony. 
It  has  been  an  examination  by  men  of  phenomena 
relating  to  women  as  they  appear  to  men  to  be. 
In  the  present  state  of  conventional  relations  be- 
tween men  and  women,  men  certainly  know  more 
about  their  own  sex  than  about  women;  and  if 
women  are,  in  truth,  the  inexplicable  and  incon- 
sistent creatures  that  they  are  commonly  repre- 
sented to  be,  they  must  know  far  more  about  each 
other's  processes  than  any  man  could  hope  to 
find  out.  Only  a  human  being  combining  all  the 
experiences  of  man's  and  woman's  life  could 
really  accurately  describe  the  life  history  of  either 
sex.  Weiniger,  a  morbid  but  keen  observer,  has 
pointed  out  that  every  man  has  some  feminine, 
and  every  woman  some  masculine,  attributes. 
However  true  this  may  be,  the  differentiation  of 
sex  habits  and  thought  is  so  extreme  that  each  sex 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     309 

has  lost  in  great  measure  the  power  to  under- 
stand the  other. 

In  the  discussion  now  going  on — of  what 
women  have  been,  should  be,  and  should  not  be — 
there  is  a  missing  factor.  Not  many  men  and, 
perhaps,  only  a  very  clear-thinking  woman,  can 
analyze  and  visualize  the  lives  of  women  as  they 
are  on  the  inside.  While  a  few  notably  sympa- 
thetic scientists,  like  Professor  Ward  and  Pro- 
fessor Thomas,  have  brought  out  the  effect  of 
restriction  and  environment  upon  women,  the  full 
weight  of  social  tradition  in  over-developing 
some  of  the  superficial  feminine  qualities,  and 
suppressing  other  deep-seated  ones,  has  not  been 
measured.  Take,  for  instance,  the  assumption 
that  most  women  think  superficially  and  with  less 
logic  than  men,  which  is  probably  a  fact.  Ward 
says  they  reach  conclusions  by  intuition,  a  sort 
of  short-cut  method  evolved  by  the  emergencies 
of  their  lives.  Yet  any  woman  knows  from  her 
childhood  that  men  prefer  to  do  her  thinking  for 
her,  and  will  disapprove  of  her  if  she  sets  up  an 
opinion  against  theirs.  In  primitive  ages  not 
only  was  thinking  unnecessary  for  a  woman  be- 
yond the  narrow  range  of  her  traditional  duties, 
but  it  was  an  actual  impropriety.  Now  only  a 
genius,  a  reformer,  or  a  mad  person  does  what 
will  be  disapproved  of.  Until  the  last  half- 
century,  marriage  was  the  only  career  open  to 


3io     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

women — a  thinking  woman  was  not  attractive  to 
men — therefore  the  astute  young  woman  either 
stopped  reasoning  as  far  as  possible  when  she 
came  to  years  of  discretion,  or  concealed  her  men- 
tal operations.  Many  a  woman  who  attains  her 
ends  by  coquetry  and  hysteria  is,  like  the  parrot 
who  couldn't  talk,  keeping  up  a  "  devil  of  a 
thinkin'  "  all  the  while;  and  will  confide  to  an- 
other woman,  who  is  in  the  secret,  a  keen  analysis 
of  the  issue  involved. 

At  the  same  time  a  sort  of  compensatory 
habitude  has  been  acquired  in  her  extraordinary 
capacity  for  emotion.  Many  a  man  yields  to 
unreasonable  demands  on  the  part  of  some 
woman  because  he  is  afraid  she  will  cry  or  fly 
into  a  tantrum.  Women,  not  being  so  illogical 
as  they  often  seem,  have  concluded  reasonably 
enough  to  use  the  easiest  method  of  getting  what 
they  want.  Indeed,  throughout  the  ages  there  has 
been  as  high  a  premium  on  tears  and  temper 
in  one  sex,  as  on  fighting  and  profanity  in  the 
other.  On  the  other  hand,  although  men  are 
as  a  rule  more  self-controlled  than  women- 
mothers  rarely  find  marked  differences  in  this  re- 
spect between  little  boys  and  girls,  when  held  to 
identical  standards  of  self-restraint. 

In  short,  tradition  and  convention  have  oper- 
ated with  much  more  force  upon  women  than 
upon  men;  and,  until  the  Nineteenth  Century  in 


America,  the  opportunity  for  self-expression  on 
the  part  of  women  has  been  much  less.  So  long 
as  a  man  was  law-abiding  and  self-supporting,  he 
might  be  as  eccentric  as  he  chose  in  minor  social 
matters  without  incurring  any  disastrous  social 
penalty;  but  non-conformity  to  social  conventions 
on  the  part  of  women  has  always  carried  with  it 
a  disproportionate  disgrace. 

The  loosening  up  of  all  conventions  and  dog- 
mas, social  and  religious,  in  the  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury, is  releasing  an  extraordinary  variety  of 
human  nature;  but  the  predominant  type  of 
womanhood  still  remains  that  of  the  middle  Nine- 
teenth Century,  produced  by  a  purely  domestic 
life  and  the  now  fast-vanishing  standard  of  what 
is  properly  feminine.  Men  are  a  sex  and  some- 
thing more.  If  they  were  judged  historically, 
merely  by  their  achievements  in  paternity,  and  if 
their  opportunities  in  life  had  been  limited  for  an 
incalculable  time  to  the  field  of  domesticity,  they 
also  might  show  the  marks  of  a  confined  and 
stunted  existence.  This  explains,  from  a  wom- 
an's standpoint,  why  women  have  been  until 
recently  The  Sex,  and  so  little  more.  For 
women  are  pretty  much  the  product  of  what  they 
were  taught  they  should  be,  modified  by  the  op- 
portunity they  have  had  to  be  otherwise. 

Quite  recently  there  have  been  a  few  serious 
books  by  men  in  which  women  are  examined  from 


312     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

the  research  standpoint:  in  which  they  are  com- 
pared with  men,  biologically,  psychologically, 
ethnologically.  But,  however  useful  as  contribu- 
tions to  the  natural  history  of  the  human  fe- 
male, they  tend  almost  inevitably  to  over- 
emphasize the  sex  characters  and  to  revert  to 
them  as  the  obvious  explanation  of  feminine 
character  and  conduct.  It  is  plain  that  the  study 
of  women  by  men  alone  is  as  one-sided  and  in- 
complete as  the  studies  of  animals  by  the  labora- 
tory zoologist,  when  uncorrected  by  the  field  col- 
lector and  the  observer  of  their  habits  in  the 
open.  It  may  certainly  be  taken  for  granted 
that  to  men  the  processes  of  womenkind  seem 
more  complex  and  less  consistent  than  their  own; 
and  there  is,  in  fact,  a  whole  area  of  thought  and 
feeling  in  women  of  which  not  even  husbands 
catch  more  than  a  glimpse  now  and  then,  and 
which  has  been  described  only  indirectly,  and 
often  morbidly,  in  the  "  problem  "  fiction,  which 
men  as  a  class  avoid  reading. 

Having  assumed  that  women  are  inexplicable, 
most  men  approach  such  subjects  as  woman's  edu- 
cation, or  her  economic  status  or  suffrage,  in  a 
confused  state  of  mind,  which  is  a  mixture  of 
tradition  and  instinctive  prejudice,  modified  in 
each  particular  case,  by  the  few  female  types  they 
happen  to  know  most  intimately.  The  most  just- 
minded,  even,  find  it  difficult  to  reason  impartially 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     313 

about  any  woman  question  as  they  would  about 
other  purely  economic  or  sociological  problems, 
because  it  is  most  closely  allied  to  race  questions, 
and,  therefore,  involves  the  more  sensitive  human 
relations;  perhaps,  also,  in  some  cases,  because 
they  find  a  personal  application  which  is  unwel- 
come. 

Again,  although  men  may  recognize  among 
themselves  a  thousand  shadings  in  masculine  ef- 
ficiency and  morality,  they  put  the  women  whom 
they  respect  and  admire  in  one  class,  and  those 
whom  they  use  or  "  have  no  use  for  "  in  another; 
and,  without  reasoning  at  all,  are  apt  to  set 
down  those  whose  deference  flatters  them  as 
"  womanly,"  and  those  who  do  not  always  agree 
with  them  as  "  strong-minded."  This  men  con- 
tinue to  do  in  spite  of  the  obvious  fact  that  there 
have  been  evolved  in  the  last  century  many  differ- 
entiations from  the  original  domestic  and  com- 
pulsorily  chaste  type, — types  whose  desires  and 
functions  both  in  the  home  and  in  society  are  cor- 
respondingly varied. 

Chronologically,  the  Nineteenth  Century  cov- 
ers the  lives  of  three  distinct  types  of  women:  the 
Colonial,  born  after  the  Revolution,  but  strictly 
adhering  to  the  traditions  of  pure  maternity  and 
of  domestic  manufacture;  the  mid-century  type, 
born  before  the  Civil  War,  and  in  process  of 
transition  from  a  producing  to  a  semi-ornamental 


314     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

class;  and  the  later,  transitional  varieties,  who, 
though  inheriting  earlier  traditions,  were  un- 
consciously forced  to  break  away  from  them  by 
industrial  and  social  changes  which  they  did  not 
comprehend. 

The  grandmothers  of  the  middle-aged  woman 
of  to-day  of  American  stock  belonged  to  the  first 
or  left-over  Colonial  type;  their  mothers  to  the 
mid-century  transitional  generation;  while  they 
themselves  are  of  many  differentiating  classes- 
some  still  purely  domestic  and  clinging  to  the 
handicrafts  of  home  production;  others  nom- 
inally domestic,  but  largely  ornamental;  still 
others  struggling  for  a  foothold  in  an  economic 
world  for  which  they  have  had  no  adequate 
preparation;  and,  finally,  a  few,  better  educated 
or  more  fortunate  in  their  opportunities,  who 
have  successfully  reached  a  degree  of  distinction 
under  physical  and  conventional  handicaps  far 
greater  than  those  usually  suffered  by  their  mas- 
culine models.  All  of  these  and  many  other 
variants  were  maternal  in  greater  or  less  measure 
as  temperament  and  fate  determined.  To  the 
earlier  type,  marriage,  maternity,  and  domesticity 
were  inevitable  and  inseparable.  Hie  confusion 
of  thinking  in  which  both  men  and  women  now 
find  themselves  arises  in  part  from  the  fact  that 
many  women  in  our  day  are  seen  to  be  maternal 
without  being  in  the  least  domesticated;  while  a 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     315 

smaller  number  are  essentially  domestic  without 
being  in  the  least  maternal;  and  a  third  group, 
both  domestic  in  taste  and  maternal  in  instinct, 
are,  nevertheless,  making  a  place  in  the  industrial 
world. 

The  fear  which  many  intelligent  men  display  at 
any  proposal  to  alter  the  sphere  of  women  comes, 
in  some  measure,  from  paucity  of  ideas.  They 
have  not  studied  the  feminist  movement,  and  they 
see  the  difficulty  of  readjusting  the  current  ideas 
of  family  duty  and  marriage  relations  to  admit 
women  to  larger  liberty.  They  find  it  easier, 
therefore,  to  continue  to  assume  that,  men  having 
made  the  world  largely  as  it  is,  they  should  know 
what  is  best  for  women,  and  that  no  reconsidera- 
tion is  necessary. 

Furthermore,  the  conditions  of  modern  social 
life  overstimulate  the  sexuality  of  men,  and  any 
change  in  the  lives  of  women  which  might  result 
in  the  limitation  of  their  sex  function  is  resented. 
Modern  women,  on  the  other  hand,  resent  equally 
the  pervasive  belief  that  their  sex  functions  repre- 
sent their  only  really  useful  contribution  to  soci- 
ety. Half  a  century  ago  Thomas  Wentworth 
Higginson  voiced  the  views  of  a  few  whose  num- 
ber has  now  become  legion: 

"  Every  creature,  male  or  female,  finds  in  its  sexual  rela- 
tions a  subordinate  part  of  its  existence.  The  need  of 


3i6     SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY 

food,  the  need  of  exercise,  the  joy  of  living,  these  come 
first  and  absorb  the  bulk  of  its  life  whether  the  individual 
be  male  or  female.  .  .  .  Two  riders  pass  .  .  .  my  win- 
dow; one  rides  a  horse,  the  other  a  mare.  The  animals 
were,  perhaps,  foaled  in  the  same  stable,  of  the  same 
progenitors.  They  have  been  reared  alike,  fed  alike, 
trained  alike,  ridden  alike,;  they  need  the  same  exercise, 
the  same  grooming;  nine  tenths  of  their  existence  are  the 
same,  and  only  the  other  tenth  is  different.  Their  whole 
organization  is  marked  by  the  distinction  of  sex;  but, 
though  the  marking  is  ineffaceable,  the  distinction  is  not 
the  first  or  most  important  fact,  .  .  .  This  is  not  denying 
the  distinctions  of  sex,  but  only  asserting  that  they  are  not 
so  inclusive  and  all-absorbing  as  is  supposed.  It  is  easy  to 
name  other  grounds  of  difference  which  entirely  ignore 
those  of  sex,  striking  directly  across  them,  and  rendering 
a  different  classification  necessary.  It  is  thus  with  distinc- 
tions of  race  or  color,  for  instance.  An  Indian  man  and 
woman  are  at  many  points  more  like  one  another  than  is 
either  to  a  white  person  of  the  same  sex.  A  black-haired 
man  or  woman,  or  a  fair-haired  man  or  woman,  are  to  be 
classed  together  in  these  physiological  aspects.  So  of  dif- 
ferences of  genius :  a  man  and  woman  of  musical  tempera- 
ment and  training  have  more  in  common  than  has  either 
with  a  person  who  is  of  the  same  sex,  but  who  cannot 
tell  one  note  from  the  other.  .  .  .  Nature  is  too  rich,  too 
full,  too  varied,  to  be  content  with  a  single  basis  of 
classification ;  she  has  a  hundred  systems  of  grouping,  ac- 
cording to  age,  sex,  temperament,  training,  and  so  on; 
and  we  get  but  a  narrow  view  of  life  when  we  limit  our 
theories  to  one  set  of  distinctions." 

The  over-emphasis  of  sex  functions,  and  the 
domestic  and  family  traditions  which  grew  out 


SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FEMININITY     317 

of  it,  found  expression  chiefly  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  in  America.  The  lives  of  hundreds  of 
women  of  the  great,  typical,  middle,  comfortable 
classes,  both  living  and  dead,  have  been  studied, 
and  are  here  interpreted  as  showing  how  coercive 
the  belated  conventions  of  feminine  duty  and  be- 
havior have  been.  They  serve  to  explain  the  in- 
consistencies, the  futility,  the  narrowness  of  the 
great  mass  of  such  women  at  the  present  time. 
To  women  who  are  struggling  in  the  meshes  of 
their  own  mixed  temperaments,  and  the  fast- 
changing  conventions  of  the  feminine  world,  here 
is  encouragement  as  well  as  revelation.  When 
men  are  able  to  free  themselves  from  their  tradi- 
tional opinions  about  women,  and  to  give  as  dis- 
passionate thought  to  the  efficiency  of  women  as 
to  other  social  problems;  and  when  women  as  a 
class  acquire  the  same  belief  in  their  own  abil- 
ities as  men  now  possess,  the  "  woman  question  " 
will  solve  itself;  for  it  will  have  become  merely  a 
phase  of  general  progress,  in  which  both  sexes 
necessarily  rise  together. 


CHAPTER  XV 
FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

"  Modern  conditions  and  modern  ideas,  and  in  particular  the 
intenser  and  subtler  perceptions  of  modern  life,  press  more  and 
more  heavily  upon  a  marriage  tie  whose  fashion  comes  from 
an  earlier  and  less  discriminating  time.  When  the  wife  was 
her  husband's  subordinate,  meeting  him  simply  and  uncritically 
for  simple  ends,  when  marriage  was  a  purely  domestic  rela- 
tionship, leaving  thought  and  the  vivid  things  of  life  almost 
entirely  to  the  unencumbered  man,  mental  and  temperamental 
incompatibilities  mattered  comparatively  little.  But  now  the 
wife,  and  particularly  the  loving,  childless  wife,  unpremedi- 
tatedly  makes  a  relentless  demand  for  a  complete  association, 
and  the  husband  exacts  unthought-of  delicacies  of  understanding 
and  co-operation.  These  are  stupendous  demands.  .  .  . 

"  No  contemporary  woman  of  education  put  to  the  test  is 
willing  to  recognize  any  claim  a  man  can  make  upon  her  but 
the  claim  of  her  freely-given  devotion  to  him.  She  wants  the 
reality  of  choice,  and  she  means  '  family,'  while  a  man  too 
often  means  only  possession.  This  alters  the  spirit  of  the  fam- 
ily relations  fundamentally.  Their  form  remains  just  what  it 
was  when  woman  was  esteemed  a  pretty,  desirable,  and,  in- 
cidentally, child-producing,  chattel.  .  .  ." — From  A  New  Machi- 
avelli — H.  G.  WELLS,  1910. 

THE  Twentieth-Century  woman  is  in  process  of 
transition  from  hyper-femininity  to  balanced 
womanhood.  This  movement,  represented  in 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  by  sporadic,  excep- 
tional types;  and  since  then  by  larger  groups, 

318 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          319 

such  as  the  college  alumnae  on  the  one  hand,  and 
women  in  industry  on  the  other,  is  steadily  gath- 
ering momentum.  Of  all  the  vocations  listed  in 
the  current  census,  there  is  not  one  which  women 
have  not  attempted.  At  the  same  time,  house- 
hold management  is  rapidly  becoming  an  applied 
science;  and  motherhood  and  the  rearing  of  chil- 
dren are  taken  with  infinitely  greater  seriousness 
and  are  measured  by  a  rising  standard  of  devo- 
tion and  intelligence. 

While  social  conservatives  point  out — what 
cannot  be  denied — that  women  grow  less  and  less 
domesticated  and  feminine  in  habit;  and,  while 
the  prophets  of  the  feminists  reply  that  they  are, 
nevertheless,  more  womanly  and  humane;  plain, 
thoughtful  men  and  women  are  puzzled  and  ap- 
prehensive in  the  face  of  the  problems  raised  by 
the  change.  The  proud  father  who,  at  some 
sacrifice,  sends  his  clever  daughter  to  college,  is 
surprised  to  find  that  when  she  returns  home  she 
is  not  satisfied  to  be  merely  the  ornament  of  the 
house  and  the  comfort  of  her  parents  until  she 
marries.  He  is  troubled  by  her  critical  attitude 
toward  her  suitors,  her  disdain  of  protection,  and 
her  reserve  toward  marriage.  The  sweet,  do- 
mestic mother,  whose  whole  life  has  been  ab- 
sorbed in  domestic  detail  and  in  childbearing, 
grieves  that  her  daughter,  just  out  of  school,  in- 
sists on  going  to  a  business  college,  or  to  a  train- 


320          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

ing-school  for  nurses,  to  learn  to  earn  her  living 
"  when  it  is  quite  unnecessary." 

At  the  other  extreme  are  the  "  emancipated  " 
parents  who,  because  of  their  own  limitations  and 
mistakes,  have  an  intense  desire  to  plant  their 
girls  in  a  larger  life  than  the  old  conventional 
domesticity.  They  are  often  astonished  and  dis- 
appointed to  find  their  daughters  relapsing  into 
traditional  femininity  under  the  fundamental  im- 
pulses of  maternity.  All  the  advantages  of  edu- 
cation seem  to  have  been  thrown  away;  for  the 
higher  culture  seems  to  bear  no  essential  relation 
to  the  inevitable  duties  of  the  domestic  woman. 

After  all,  the  confusion  and  doubts  of  parents 
are  of  less  account  than  the  perplexities  of  the 
marriageable  young  woman  of  this  transitional 
day.  She  sees  that  older  women  accepted  as 
right — if  not  satisfactory — the  peculiar  status 
which  was  half-domestic,  half-dependent;  but  she 
has  somehow  acquired  an  instinctive  sense,  from 
the  social  atmosphere,  from  the  newspapers, 
from  the  example  of  women  who  have  "  done 
things,"  that  she  ought  not  to  accept  unquestion- 
ingly  such  a  plane  for  herself.  She  wants  to 
marry,  but  does  not  dare  to  say  so,  and  must, 
therefore,  practise  the  ancient  arts  of  conceal- 
ment and  coquetry;  or,  scorning  to  do  so,  is  likely 
to  remain  unmarried. 

If  she  marries  under  the  impetus  of  natural 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          321 

passion  and  maternal  instinct — nothing  having 
been  said  to  her  of  the  real  meaning  of  mar- 
riage or  the  nature  of  men — she  invariably  be- 
gins with  a  romantic  and  unpractical  idea  of  what 
she  ought  to  give  and  receive.  The  women  of 
former  generations  had  to  marry  or  fail  utterly 
in  life,  from  the  standpoint  of  their  world.  They 
took,  consequently,  any  kind  of  man,  the  best  that 
offered,  blindly  accepting  whatever  fate  the  al- 
liance brought  them.  They  considered  them- 
selves fortunate  if  the  master  of  their  destiny 
was  a  good  provider  and  a  kind  father  to  their 
children.  However  mismated,  they  could  not 
face  the  horror  of  divorce;  nor  could  they  sup- 
port themselves  and  their  children  in  an  in- 
dustrial world  which  was  not  yet  in  need  of  un- 
trained women.  Duty  to  their  husbands  and  re- 
ligious sanction  made  child-bearing — regardless 
of  the  quality  of  the  child  or  the  need  of  pop- 
ulation— inevitable  and  involuntary.  Although 
purely  instinctive  parenthood  produced  large 
numbers  of  undervitalized,  defective  human  be- 
ings that  ought  never  to  have  been  born,  the 
belief  that  these  were  providentially  sent  and 
were  useful  to  the  state  relieved  the  parents  from 
all  responsibility  for  their  uncertain  quality. 

The  intelligent  young  parents  of  to-day,  how- 
ever, after  a  child  or  two  has  arrived — if  not  be- 
fore— begin  to  calculate  the  cost  and,  perhaps, 


322  FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

the  inconvenience  of  children  under  the  more 
exacting  standards  of  modern  life.  Professor 
Amos  G.  Warner  once  calculated  roughly  that 
even  in  a  laboring  man's  family  a  baby  two 
months  old  cost  not  less  than  one  hundred  dol- 
lars; while  in  fairly  well-to-do  families  the  ex- 
pense of  extra  service  while  the  mother  was  in- 
capacitated, of  nursing,  of  doctor's  attendance,  of 
the  layette,  and  of  petty  incidentals,  amounted  to 
five  hundred  and  sometimes  to  a  thousand  dol- 
lars. With  an  ever-increasing  emphasis  on  the 
hygienic  care  of  children,  modern  parents  can- 
not but  count  the  cost  of  them  in  personal  sacri- 
fices as  well  as  in  money.  The  more  intelligent 
the  population  becomes,  the  more  will  married 
people  comprehend  that  society  is  not  so  much  in 
need  of  mere  human  beings  as  of  well-born,  well- 
nurtured,  competent,  moralized  citizens.  Some 
people  may  develop  a  larger  paternity,  like  that 
of  Leland  and  Jane  Stanford,  who,  when  they 
had  lost  their  delicate  only  son,  founded  a  uni- 
versity with  the  motto :  "  The  children  of  Cali- 
fornia shall  be  my  children." 

Perhaps  there  is  nothing  which  the  thought- 
ful married  woman  of  the  younger  generation 
resents  more  than  the  assumption  on  the  part  of 
theorists  that  the  decline  in  the  birth-rate  is  due 
chiefly  to  her  selfishness  and  failure  in  maternity. 
She  knows,  but  cannot  publicly  explain,  that  in 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          323 

not  a  few  cases  husbands  are  unwilling  to  sub- 
ordinate their  careers  to  unregulated  instinct; 
preferring  few  or  no  children,  with  a  care-free, 
comely  partner  and  a  quiet  household.  Some 
modern  men  value  their  wives  for  companion- 
ship more  than  for  child-bearing,  and  it  some- 
times happens  that  the  wife  is  only  allowed  to 
have  her  baby  as  a  sort  of  concession  to 
what  the  husband  regards  as  an  overdeveloped 
maternal  craving.  And  other  men  have  a  con- 
science toward  the  unborn  child  and  toward  so- 
ciety, wishing  to  bring  into  the  world  only  those 
that  are  fit  and  that  can  be  properly  brought  up. 
If  husbands  of  these  exceptional  types  were 
men  of  dissolute  habits  and  extreme  selfishness, 
or  unintelligent,  they  might  be  set  down  as  merely 
abnormal;  but  they  are,  in  fact,  as  a  class,  the 
physically  and  morally  fit,  who  would  make  good 
parents.  That  they  hesitate  or  decline  to  be 
fathers  of  large  families  points  not  to  the  defi- 
ciencies of  women,  but  to  a  racial  change  which 
is  going  on  toward  the  whole  problem  of  popula- 
tion. By  far  the  larger  part  of  mankind  are 
fathers,  not  because  they  are  consciously  paternal, 
but  because  they  wish  a  home  and  a  woman,  and 
must  take  its  consequences.  Even  among  these 
families  the  onus  of  the  childless  household  or 
the  single-child  family  no  longer  rests  upon 
women  alone.  Within  a  decade  scientific  medical 


324          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

research  has  transferred  it  largely  to  men.  The 
revelation  of  the  direct  causal  relation  between 
venereal  diseases  among  men  and  sterility  and 
physical  degeneration  among  married  women 
has  only  just  begun  to  take  effect.  In  time  it 
must  afford  that  new  "  sanction  for  pre-marital 
chastity  "  in  men  which  a  modern  German  sci- 
entist urges  as  the  absolute  essential  of  a  self- 
renewing  and  healthy  population. 

All  this  recent  agitation  against  "  the  con- 
spiracy of  silence,"  this  criticism  of  the  childless 
married  woman,  this  modern  emphasis  on  child- 
care,  this  expose  of  the  unchastity  of  the  average 
young  man,  cannot  but  reach  in  some  form  the 
girl  who  thinks  of  marriage  and  children,  how- 
ever carefully  she  may  be  guarded.  The  girls 
of  leisure,  who  fill  up  the  interval  between  school- 
days and  marriage  with  friendly  visiting,  hospital 
and  charity  labors,  church  and  settlement  work 
among  the  poor,  must  come  upon  the  tragic  origin 
of  defective  children;  and  cannot  fail  to  see 
how  many  children  are  undesired  and  neglected. 
Unlike  the  secluded  and  ignorant  young  creatures 
of  former  times,  who  became  wives  before  they 
were  physically  grown,  the  modern  young  woman 
sees  and  fears  and  questions  the  facts  of  sex;  and 
by  so  much  as  she  does  so,  will  wish  to  know 
more  and  to  exact  more  of  any  man  who  offers 
himself  to  be  the  father  of  her  children.  Herein  ( 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          325 

will  lie  many  tragedies  both  for  the  man  and  the 
woman. 

Under  the  influence  of  contradictory  impulses 
many  girls  now  go  into  wage-earning.  The 
ranks  of  school  teaching  and  office  workers  are 
filled  up  with  young  women  of  the  comfortable 
middle-class,  who,  in  a  former  day,  would  have 
remained  at  home  waiting  to  be  married.  Since 
these  workers  are  likely  to  have  more  self- 
respect  and  more  initiative  than  those  who  accept 
dependence  without  question,  they  are  a  strong 
and  selected  class;  and  by  that  fact,  therefore, 
they  are  more  fit  to  be  mothers.  The  office 
women,  in  the  course  of  their  work,  are  likely  to 
meet  men  of  similar  tastes  and  aims,  and  to 
marry  with  every  chance  of  happiness.  But  the 
school  teachers  are,  by  the  very  conditions  of 
their  trade,  an  isolated  class;  and  thus  it  comes 
about  that  thousands  of  young  women  of  excep- 
tional education  and  capacity  find  an  outlet  for 
their  maternal  instincts  in  the  task  of  doing  for 
children  what  their  parents  cannot  do. 

Nature,  indeed,  may  have  no  use  for  child- 
less people;  and  a  society  that  is  under  the  neces- 
sity to  breed  vast  numbers  of  soldiers  abhors 
them.  But  in  the  American  world,  where  mili- 
tarism plays  small  part  in  the  lives  of  ordinary 
citizens,  and  where  there  is  an  increasing  effort 
to  preserve  child-life,  there  is  an  immense  need 


326          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

of  those  who  have  strong  childward  instincts,  and 
who  can  be  satisfied  with  vicarious  parenthood. 
The  tenderly  maternal,  patient  women  who  carry 
on  the  kindergartens,  the  orphan  asylums,  the 
hospitals  for  crippled  children,  and  the  homes 
for  defectives;  or  who  spend  their  lives  among 
the  poor  in  settlements,  have  compensations  for 
their  childlessness  such  as  many  unthinking  par- 
ents who  take  their  children  impatiently,  in  the 
course  of  nature,  never  knew.  And  if  there  are 
still  some  who  cannot  be  fully  satisfied  to  hold  in 
their  arms  any  child  except  one  of  their  own  ful- 
filled love,  even  such  enforced  denial  is  not  so 
great  a  tragedy  as  the  mother  who  brings  into 
the  world  infants  she  cannot  wish  for  and  per- 
haps finds  it  difficult  to  love. 

Historians  have  pointed  out  that  the  Christian 
celibacy  of  the  Middle  Ages  prevented  the  re- 
production of  the  most  refined  and  the  most  in- 
tellectual class  in  Europe;  yet  it  was  the  monks 
and  nuns  who  kept  alight  the  shrines  of  Faith, 
who  trimmed  the  lamp  of  learning,  who  pre- 
served the  gentleness  of  unselfish,  humane  re- 
ligion. While  the  whole  Continent  of  Europe  was 
drenched  in  blood  and  devastated  by  religious 
wars,  while  plague  and  ignorance  mowed  down 
the  helpless  people,  the  scholar  and  the  devotee 
cherished  the  seeds  of  civilization.  So  in  our 
day  the  childless,  whether  single  or  married,  may 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          327 

find  a  larger  duty  to  their  kind  than  the  easy 
gratification  of  instinct;  and  may  make  as  great 
contributions  to  society  as  those  who  follow  na- 
ture without  question. 

Undoubtedly  the  higher  ideal  of  love  as  well 
as  of  parental  duty  in  our  day  prevents  the  mar- 
riage of  some  of  the  best  individuals,  because  "  it 
differs  wholly  from  localized  passion  in  being 
selective."  Although,  in  the  readjustment  of 
higher  ideals,  there  are  now  some  women  un- 
married who  would  make  superior  mothers,  and 
many  others,  undeveloped  and  uneducated,  who 
make  very  poor  ones,  there  are  a  few — prophetic 
of  the  many  soon  to  come — who  deliberately  and 
joyously  choose  motherhood.  At  the  time  when 
the  women's  colleges  were  founded  and  the  co- 
educational method  was  established  in  the  state 
universities,  two  main  objections  were  made  by 
the  conservatives.  It  was  said  that  girls  who 
were  to  marry  did  not  need  such  an  education; 
and  that,  if  they  took  it,  they  would  not  wish  to 
marry.  But  in  the  forty  years  since  then,  thou- 
sands of  college  women  have  disproved  both  of 
these  contentions,  and  have,  besides,  borne  as 
many  and  as  vigorous  children  as  the  women  of 
the  same  social  class  who  were  educated  in  the 
traditional  feminine  ways.  Although  they  found 
it  extremely  difficult  to  apply  a  classical  training 
— devised  by  men  for  men  of  a  special  class — 


328  FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

to  domestic  needs,  their  mental  culture  has  been 
by  no  means  wasted.  They  could,  at  any  rate, 
grasp  the  problems  of  their  children's  education. 
To  their  experience  and  their  effort  is  due,  in 
great  measure,  the  demand  for  domestic  train- 
ing for  girls  in  schools  as  well  as  colleges;  and 
also  the  growing  emphasis  upon  sanitation, 
hygiene,  physiology,  and  physical  training,  to  the 
neglect  of  piano-playing,  fancy  needlework,  and 
the  purely  ornamental  requirements  for  girls. 

There  is  an  increasing  number  of  young  women 
who,  in  spite  of  a  purely  masculine  culture,  have 
survived  to  be  exceptionally  happy  and  fortunate 
mothers  of  strong,  clever  children.  I  have  in 
mind  one  who,  after  attaining  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa,  and  making  a  brilliant  record  as  a 
teacher,  married  a  college  man,  and  is  now  the 
mother  of  six  fine  children.  When  the  third  of 
these  was  born  within  fifteen  months  of  the  sec- 
ond, a  friend  suggested  that  this  was  rather  too 
precipitate.  The  mother  smilingly  and  content- 
edly replied:  "  But  I  married  so  late — if  I  am 
to  have  a  family  I  must  be  quick  about  it."  Yet 
she  had  been  a  rich  girl,  had  married  a  poor  man, 
and  has  never  had  more  than  eighteen  hundred  a 
year  to  spend  for  the  family.  As  the  expense 
of  higher  education  for  the  children  comes  on, 
she  is  returning  to  tutoring  as  a  means  of  ful- 
filling her  parental  ambitions.  When  they  shall 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          329 

have  been  launched  in  life,  she  will  yet  have  many 
years  in  which  to  recoup  herself  for  all  her  sacri- 
fices, by  personal  culture  and  in  public  service. 

If  it  be  thought  that  such  a  woman  is  excep- 
tional, let  it  here  be  set  down  as  a  fact  that 
there  is  a  daily  growing  roster  of  voluntary 
mothers.  Out  of  the  confusions  of  domestic 
readjustment  there  is  emerging  a  new  and  higher 
ideal  of  motherhood  and  family  life.  As  the 
delicate,  prudish,  ignorant  girl  of  a  former  time 
is  replaced  by  those  more  robust,  more  sensibly 
dressed,  and  more  practically  educated,  more  and 
more  of  them  will  choose  to  marry  poor  young 
men,  not  at  all  to  be  supported,  nor  solely  under 
the  glamor  of  romantic  love,  but  for  the  sake  of 
equal  comradeship  and  for  the  sacrificial  joys  of 
motherhood.  They  are  neither  afraid  nor  vic- 
timized, but  choosers  of  their  fate  and  adequate 
to  meet  it. 

The  most  hopeful  signs  of  our  times  are,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  increase  of  voluntary,  conscious, 
intelligent  parenthood  in  the  middle  stratum  of 
society;  and,  on  the  other,  the  tendency  to  limit 
degenerate  procreation  both  by  public  sentiment 
and  by  law.  The  marital  tragedies  of  our  time 
are,  to  a  considerable  extent,  due  to  the  fact  that 
men  are  as  yet  lagging  behind  women  in  their 
racial  conscience.  The  more  refined  nature  and 
the  intimate  personal  relation  of  women  to  pos- 


330          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

terity  give  them  a  clearer  vision  of  the  conse- 
quences of  indiscriminate  and  unregulated  sexu- 
ality. Men  still  associate  sex-vigor  with  manli- 
ness, and,  having  been  brought  up  in  the  conven- 
tional theory  that  the  sex  appetite  is  beyond  con- 
trol, and  its  gratification  essential  to  health,  they 
have,  as  a  class,  no  adequate  motive  for  chastity 
before  marriage,  nor  for  self-restraint  after- 
wards. 

Since  even  engaged  persons  rarely  have  any 
understanding  on  this  fundamental  matter,  they 
begin  their  married  life  in  entire  ignorance  of 
each  other's  views,  and  often  with  widely  differ- 
ing standards.  The  specious  terms  of  the  di- 
vorce court,  in  a  very  large  number  of  cases, 
cover  the  tragic  incompatibility  on  this  primary 
relation,  which  both  partners  have  too  much  de- 
cency to  confess.  The  very  innocence  in  which 
girls  are  still  enshrouded  makes  them,  as  wives, 
unjust  to  their  more  primitive  partners;  and  the 
atmosphere  of  vulgarity  in  which  the  average 
boy  grows  up  makes  it  impossible  for  the  man  to 
understand  the  shocks  that  the  commonplaces  of 
sex  experience  bring  to  the  idealistic  woman. 
Formerly,  the  woman  had  no  future  but  mar- 
riage, and  no  recourse  after  marriage  but  endur- 
ance; but  the  modern  woman  who  goes  into  social 
work  or  wage-earning,  senses  dimly,  if  she  does 
not  fully  know,  the  animality  of  certain  types  of 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          331 

men,  whom  she  will  not  marry,  while  these  men 
themselves  instinctively  prefer  a  less  critical  and 
more  sensual  partner.  And  if  a  refined  woman 
should  marry  such  a  man,  it  is  evident  that  no 
woman,  however  vital,  is  likely  to  satisfy  one 
who  has  acquired  the  habits  of  promiscuity. 

A  partial  explanation  of  the  changing  attitude 
of  young  women  toward  marriage  must  be  sought 
in  the  entirely  altered  conditions  of  courtship. 
The  girls  of  two  and  three  generations  ago  were 
courted  briefly  and  married  promptly  before  their 
physique  was  mature  or  their  characters  crystal- 
lized. It  was  far  easier  for  a  semi-child  of 
eighteen  or  less  to  accept  a  husband's  rule  than 
it  is  for  the  modern  woman,  who  marries  at 
maturity,  and  who  has  already  had  some  life  of 
her  own.  In  our  day  nearly  two-thirds  of  all 
girls  in  the  whole  country  between  sixteen  and 
twenty  years  of  age  are  engaged  in  some  gain- 
ful occupation.  The  period  of  courtship,  and 
even  of  betrothal,  is  greatly  prolonged,  and  mar- 
riages are  far  less  likely  to  be  hastily  made.  If 
the  marital  adjustments  are  more  difficult  because 
the  habits  of  the  partners  are  more  fixed,  there  is 
compensation  in  the  fact  that  they  marry  less 
blindly  and  with  better  judgment. 

Moreover,  the  conditions  of  courtship  are 
rapidly  changing.  It  is  less  the  game  of  pursuer 
and  pursued;  more  a  preliminary  excursion  in 


332          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

which  the  young  pair  who  are  mutually  attracted 
try  out  each  other's  characters.  Formerly  court- 
ship was  carried  on  under  abnormal  circum- 
stances, at  parties,  and  when  both  boy  and  girl 
were  on  their  best  behavior.  But  nowadays  they 
grow  up  seeing  each  other  every  day,  in  school 
and  college  classrooms,  in  stores  and  offices,  on 
boats  and  cars,  as  they  travel  to  and  fro  about 
their  work.  There  is  constant  opportunity  for 
them  to  learn  each  other's  essential  qualities,  and 
time  enough  for  one  or  more  trial  engagements 
before  marriage  is  possible. 

So  far  from  this  freedom  resulting  in  laxity 
of  morals,  it  seems  to  operate  the  other  way. 
Jane  Addams  has  pointed  out  that,  in  spite  of 
this  modern  army  of  girl  wage-earners,  whose 
wages  are  below  a  decent  living  standard,  the 
price  of  "  white  slaves  "  is  constantly  rising,  and 
the  procurers  find  it  more  and  more  difficult  to 
supply  the  market.  It  is  certainly  encouraging 
that  girls  so  hardly  pressed  in  an  inhuman  in- 
dustrial world,  sell  themselves  less  readily  both 
into  marriages  of  convenience  and  into  body- 
slavery  than  ever  before.  With  economic  inde- 
pendence there  has  come  a  higher  degree  of  self- 
respect. 

In  this  period  of  transition  the  financial  aspects 
of  married  women's  lives  are  certainly  perplexing. 
Although  the  law  still  entitles  a  wife  to  support, 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          333 

there  is  an  increasing  group  of  thinking  people 
who  believe  that  that  right  should  be  qualified,  or 
made  in  some  degree  reciprocal  between  hus- 
band and  wife.  Some  believe  that  childless 
women  ought  to  earn  their  own  living,  whether 
married  or  single;  or,  at  least,  to  give  their 
leisure  to  philanthropy  and  civic  service.  Others 
go  as  far  as  Charlotte  Perkins  Gilman  in  re- 
quiring even  child-bearing  women  to  definitely  con- 
tribute other  services  to  society,  except  during  the 
small  part  of  their  lives  when  they  are  actually 
bearing  and  nursing  children.  They  point  to 
our  grandmothers  who,  even  with  large  families, 
gave  more  than  half  their  time  to  domestic 
production.  For  the  present,  however,  most 
thoughtful  people  will  feel  that  it  is  for  the  best 
welfare  of  children,  and  therefore  of  society, 
that  mothers  should  be  supported  either  by  their 
husbands  or  pensioned  by  society  temporarily, 
until  the  children  themselves  have  been  fitted  for 
some  vocation  and  are  old  enough  to  earn  a 
living. 

With  the  elimination  of  many  processes  from 
the  household,  and  the  application  of  scientific 
invention  to  others,  the  simple  housekeeping 
necessary  to  family  life  becomes  steadily  less  and 
the  attention  bestowed  upon  children  constantly 
greater.  Domesticity  is  becoming  relatively  un- 
important, while  motherhood  and  child-nurture 


334          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

are  rising  in  value.  This  change  of  emphasis 
points  to  a  fundamental  modification  of  the  ideals 
of  wifehood  and  motherhood.  It  is  at  last  con- 
ceivable that  a  woman  may  fulfil  both  duties  ac- 
ceptably without  being  able  to  darn  her  husband's 
socks,  to  make  buttonholes,  or  produce  mince 
pies.  One  of  the  most  successful  mothers  of  my 
acquaintance — judged  by  the  product  of  her  life, 
two  capable  and  morally  superior  sons — can  do 
none  of  these  things,  and  never  did  do  them,  al- 
though she  had  only  a  moderate  income.  Left  a 
widow  when  she  was  scarcely  more  than  a  girl, 
she  concentrated  her  attention,  not  on  feeding 
and  indulging  her  boys,  and  practising  ex- 
hausting economies  to  pamper  their  selfishness, 
but  on  guiding  their  minds  and  morals.  As  she 
herself  says:  "I  had  to  be  father  as  well  as 
mother  to  them,"  and  her  interpretation  of  that 
was  to  make  herself  a  delightfully  sympathetic 
companion  in  every  thought  and  impulse  of  their 
lives,  interested  in  their  school  and  athletic  activ- 
ities, and  even  in  their  sex  problems.  She  is 
still  their  chosen  confidante  in  manhood,  while 
devoting  herself  to  the  personal  culture  for  which 
she  had  scant  time  formerly. 

In  proportion  as  the  meaning  of  the  family 
centers  in  the  needs  and  companionship  of  chil- 
dren rather  than  in  physical  luxury  and  wife- 
service,  the  mentality  of  women  is  stimulated. 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          335 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  for  the 
proper  nurture  and  guidance  of  children  some- 
thing more  is  required  in  the  mother  than  an 
ornamental  education  and  perfection  in  superflu- 
ous domestic  detail.  We  are  at  the  beginning 
of  a  movement  to  adapt  public  education  to  the 
needs  of  ordinary  men  and  women.  The  cul- 
ture of  common  things  is  beginning  to  take  prece- 
dence of  learning,  which  has  often  existed  solely 
"  for  its  own  sake,"  as  a  sort  of  personal  luxury, 
like  diamonds  or  antiques.  In  this  progress 
women  will  share,  and,  in  so  doing,  motherhood 
will  become  something  more  than  a  blind  obedi- 
ence to  nature  and  mankind.  It  will  become — 
what  it  has  always  been  potentially — a  high  vo- 
cation worthy  of  the  best  preparation  and  the  pro- 
foundest  devotion.  At  the  same  time  it  will  not 
demand,  as  it  used  to  do,  the  absolute  surrender 
of  all  personal  life  and  liberty.  It  may  even 
happen  very  soon  that  nothing  will  be  too  good 
for  those  whose  chief  task  it  is  to  raise  the 
quality  of  the  race.  And  self-sacrifice,  which  has 
long  been  the  excessive  virtue  of  maternal  women, 
may  be  reduced  to  a  normal  minimum,  leaving 
just  enough  to  keep  feminine  conceit  within 
bounds,  and  masculine  selfishness  as  well.  The 
time  has  certainly  come  when  maternity  is  no 
longer  an  excuse  for  keeping  women  within 
"  their  sphere,"  but  is  rather  an  imperative  rea- 


336          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

son   for   compelling  them   to   enlarge   it  to   the 
periphery  of  the  world. 

Just  now,  the  most  serious  perplexity  of  the  in- 
telligent married  woman  of  middle  age  is  what 
to  do  with  herself  when  her  children  are  gone 
from  home,  and  when  housekeeping,  properly 
systematized  and  modernized,  ought  not  to  en- 
gage more  than  half  her  working-day.  Dread- 
ing the  atrophy  of  premature  age  into  which  many 
women  fall  for  want  of  tasks  commensurate  with 
their  powers,  she  seeks  to  contribute  something 
more  than  mere  manual  busyness  and  social  chit- 
chat and  hospitality  to  her  neighborhood.  She 
is,  however,  seriously  handicapped  by  the  super- 
ficial education  of  her  youth,  her  lack  of  experi- 
ence of  the  world,  and  by  the  disuse  of  her  in- 
tellect during  the  twenty  or  twenty-five  years 
given  to  family  duties.  While  she  may  be  strong 
and  capable,  she  has  no  vocation,  and  does  not 
know  where  to  take  hold  on  life.  A  large  body 
of  women  in  this  situation  are  trying  to  solve  it 
by  the  cultural  opportunities  of  women's  clubs, 
where  they  are  often  led  by  those  only  a  little 
better  equipped  than  themselves.  Others  devote 
the  time  to  charity  councils  and  committees,  and  to 
a  thousand  other  unpaid  social  services.  Yet 
even  for  these  tasks  of  citizenship  their  training 
has  been  quite  insufficient.  Many,  in  default  of 
any  proper  chance  for  a  belated  education,  and 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          337 

without  any  necessity  for  self-support,  relapse 
into  the  conventional  social  pleasures  in  order 
to  fill  up  the  time  till  old  age  comes  upon 
them. 

The  loss  to  society  by  this  waste  or  partial  use 
of  released  human  capacity  is  incalculable — com- 
parable only  to  the  waste  of  human  life  in  pris- 
ons. It  is  a  curious  fact  that  we  still  cling  to  the 
notion  that  education  must  be  formal,  and  that 
it  is  properly  confined  to  the  first  third  or  quarter 
of  life.  Whenever  middle-aged  persons  attempt 
to  remedy  the  defects  of  earlier  years,  they  are 
commonly  regarded  with  a  mixture  of  pity  and 
amusement,  instead  of  with  the  admiration  which 
their  aspirations  deserve.  Formal  education  in 
youth  is  in  reality  a  sort  of  skeleton  to  be  clothed 
and  filled  out  by  personal  experience  and  continu- 
ous accretions.  It  is  more  convenient  to  begin 
life  with  a  skeleton  to  work  upon,  but  there  is 
no  reason  why  education  should  not  be  co- 
extensive with  the  whole  mental  development. 
When  a  house  has  been  well  built  and  the  founda- 
tions rot  out,  it  is  possible  and  very  good  economy 
to  jack  it  up  and  put  new  supports  underneath — 
it  need  not  be  left  to  decay.  When  repaired,  en- 
larged, and  perhaps  refurnished,  it  is  often  more 
interesting  and  comfortable  than  a  new  one.  So 
is  it,  likewise,  with  human  beings. 

These  difficulties  of  the   middle-aged  woman 


338  FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

point  unquestionably  to  a  reconstruction  in 
women's  education.  Since  parents  cannot  know* 
whether  a  daughter  is  to  marry  or  not,  they  must 
prepare  her  for  marriage  certainly,  and  for  self- 
support  as  well.  No  woman,  even  when  married, 
can  be  sure  that  she  will  never  have  to  support 
herself.  These  two  aims  are  by  no  means  in- 
compatible, if  the  order  of  studies  in  the  present 
curriculum  were  readjusted  so  as  to  give  first 
the  essentials  and  afterward  as  much  culture  as 
there  may  be  time  for.  There  is  really  very  little 
dispute  about  what  the  ordinary  girl  needs  to 
know — none  at  all,  except  with  regard  to  sex 
matters — and  since  the  majority  of  girls  leave 
school  before  they  are  sixteen  years  of  age,  there 
is  approximately  only  ten  years  in  which  to  pre- 
pare them  for  life.  Yet  our  present  program 
takes  this  hardly  at  all  into  account,  but  assumes 
that  education  is  to  make  conventional  gentlemen 
and  ladies  rather  than  efficient  citizens.  It  is  in 
thrall  still  to  a  tradition  as  strong  as  that  which 
has  imprisoned  women — the  idea  that  the  object 
of  education  is  to  attain  gentility  rather  than  to 
develop  industrial  and  moral  capacity. 

For  the  daughter  of  the  laboring  man,  wage- 
earning  is  usually  imperative  until  she  marries, 
and,  in  many  cases,  afterward,  since  her  husband 
is  liable  to  be  out  of  work,  to  be  ill,  or  to  become 
disabled.  But  she  rarely  stays  in  school  long 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          339 

enough  to  get  training  for  self-support,  even  were 
it  offered.  Among  young  women  somewhat  bet- 
ter off,  self-support  is  rapidly  becoming  the  rule, 
because  they  like  the  sense  of  economic  independ- 
ence; but  as  yet  the  common  schools,  and  even 
the  high  schools,  only  afford  inadequate  training 
in  a  few  limited  lines.  Vocational  training  is, 
therefore,  an  expensive  luxury,  instead  of  an  es- 
sential preparation  provided  by  the  state.  This 
has  brought  about  a  terrible  competition  in  all 
the  lines  of  work  open  to  girls,  which  require  only 
a  short  apprenticeship,  and  from  which  there  is 
no  possible  promotion. 

But  when  the  readjustment  of  educational 
methods  to  the  real  needs  of  youth  shall  have 
been  made,  there  will  still  remain  the  problem  of 
what  to  do  with  the  married  women  when  they 
shall  have  fulfilled  their  maternal  functions. 
They  must,  somehow,  begin  to  educate  themselves 
over  again,  and  it  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the 
agricultural  colleges  point  out  the  way  in  which 
it  may  be  done.  The  "  short  courses  "  offered  at 
Cornell,  Wisconsin,  and  other  colleges,  set  a 
model  for  the  coming  schools  for  re-education, 
for  the  education  of  the  middle-aged.  Already 
there  are  courses  of  reading  and  study  for  the 
farmers'  wives,  and  the  time  may  come  when  the 
ambitious  mother  and  wife,  partially  liberated 
from  family  cares,  will  neither  be  "  laid  on  the 


340          FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

shelf  "  nor  be  an  object  of  jest  when  she  under- 
takes to  develop  her  latent  abilities. 

The  case  of  the  able-bodied  woman  of  fifty  is 
clear — she  ought  to  have  something  more  to 
do  than  that  which  housekeeping  usually  requires 
in  modern  life — but  the  solution  of  the  restless- 
ness of  younger  wives  is  not  so  easy.  More  and 
more,  trained  nurses  and  nursemaids,  mothers' 
assistants,  kindergartens,  playgrounds,  nurseries, 
and  primary  schools  remove  children  from  their 
mothers'  care  during  several  hours  a  day.  The 
preparation  of  many  foods  and  the  making  of 
garments  are  better  and,  oftentimes,  more 
economically  done  outside  the  home  than  they  can 
be  in  it.  The  pleasures  of  the  family,  which  once 
involved  much  labor  for  the  housewife,  are  found 
outside  the  house.  Industrial  changes  on  the  one 
hand,  and  household  conveniences  on  the  other, 
continually  release  more  and  more  domestic 
women  from  really  necessary  and  satisfying 
labor.  Thus  the  age  limit  of  partial  leisure  for 
this  class  is  pushed  back  to,  perhaps,  thirty-five 
or  forty  years,  if  there  are  not  more  than  three 
children  in  the  family. 

Not  only  does  the  intelligent  married  woman 
of  small  family  have  more  time  in  which  to  think, 
but  the  ideal  of  the  family  bond  itself  has  been 
altered  since  women  were  exclusively  domestic. 
Until  quite  recently  marriage  had  only  two  aims: 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          341 

offspring  and  the  regulation  of  the  sex  instinct. 
It  has  now  come  to  have  another  of  profound 
import:  the  comradeship  of  congenial  tempera- 
ments. At  present  this  third  motive  is  demanded 
by  the  wife  more  than  by  the  husband,  partly 
because  she  has  time  to  think  about  it,  and  more 
probably  because  the  man's  gregariousness  finds 
satisfaction  in  business  association  with  other 
men.  Professor  Thomas  has  expressed  this  ad- 
mirably in  the  following  paragraphs: 

"  An  examination,  also,  of  so-called  happy  marriages 
shows  very  generally  that  they  do  not,  except  for  the 
common  interest  of  children,  rest  on  the  true  comradeship 
of  like  minds,  but  represent  an  equilibrium  reached 
through  an  extension  of  the  maternal  interest  of  the 
woman  to  the  man,  whereby  she  looks  after  his  personal 
needs  as  she  does  after  those  of  the  children — cherishing 
him,  in  fact,  as  a  child — or  in  extension  to  woman  on  the 
part  of  man  of  that  nurture  and  affection  which  is  in  his 
nature  to  give  to  pets  and  all  helpless  (and  preferably 
dumb)  creatures.  .  .  . 

"  Obviously  a  more  solid  basis  of  association  is  necessary 
than  either  of  these  two  instinctively  based  compromises; 
and  the  practice  of  an  occupational  activity  of  her  own 
choosing  by  the  woman,  and  a  generous  attitude  toward 
this  on  the  part  of  the  man,  would  contribute  to  relieve  the 
strain  and  to  make  marriage  more  frequently  successful." 

For  any  one  to  suggest  a  solution  for  all  these 
family  perplexities  would  require  the  assumption 
of  omniscience.  It  is  sufficient  here  to  show  that 


342  FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES 

many  types  of  family  and  marital  relations  are 
being  evolved  which  give  promise  of  greater 
justice  and  more  content  to  all  concerned.  Les- 
ter Ward  remarks  that,  while  most  persons  sup- 
pose that  nothing  is  so  certainly  fixed  by  nature, 
and  even  by  divine  decree,  as  the  particular  form 
of  marriage  which  happens  to  prevail  in  their  own 
country,  there  is,  in  fact,  nothing  which  is  so 
purely  conventional  as  just  the  way  in  which  men 
and  women  agree  to  carry  on  the  work  of  con- 
tinuing the  race.  Professor  George  Elliott 
Howard  boldly  declares  that  the  problems  of  the 
family  should  be  studied  in  connection  "  with  the 
actual  conditions  of  modern  social  life;"  that  it 
is  vain  to  appeal  to  ideals  born  of  old  and  very 
different  ones;  and  he  urges  that  the  moral  lead- 
ers of  men  should  preach  "  actual  instead  of  con- 
ventional righteousness." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  with  relative 
economic  independence,  and  with  a  broader  and 
more  practical  education,  women  are  rapidly 
passing  from  purely  instinctive  to  conscious  and 
voluntary  motherhood;  nor  that,  as  they  do  so, 
they  will  set  a  higher  standard  of  sex  morality 
for  men.  In  this  process  there  will  inevitably  be 
some  mal-adjustment  and  some  unhappiness — 
whether  more  or  less  than  our  forbears  endured 
when  conditions  were  even  farther  from  the  ideal 
than  now,  there  is  no  means  of  knowing.  So  far 


FAMILY  PERPLEXITIES          343 

as  women  are  concerned,  this  growth  means  a 
larger  life,  a  life  not  exclusively  domestic  and 
maternal;  and  by  so  much  as  mothers  are  more 
than  instinctively  maternal,  their  children  will  be 
better  born  and  more  intelligently  nurtured. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
THE  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

"  We're  hungry  .  .  .  and   since 
We  needs  must  hunger — better  for  man's  love, 
Than   God's  truth !   better,  for  companions   sweet, 
Than  great  convictions!     Let  us  bear  our  weights, 
Preferring  dreary  hearths  to  desert  souls." 

ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING. 

"  We  are  discovering  women  .  .  .  our  modern  world  is 
burdened  with  its  sense  of  the  immense,  now  half-inarticulate, 
significance  of  women.  .  .  . 

"  Woman  insists  upon  her  presence.  She  is  no  longer  a  mere 
physical  need,  an  aesthetic  by-play,  a  sentimental  background; 
she  is  a  moral  and  intellectual  necessity  in  man's  life.  She 
comes  to  the  politician  and  demands,  Is  she  a  child  or  a  citi- 
zen? Is  she  a  thing  or  a  soul?  She  comes  to  the  individual 
man  .  .  .  and  asks,  Is  she  a  cherished  weakling  or  an  equal 
mate,  an  unavoidable  helper?  Is  she  to  be  tried  and  trusted  or 
guarded  and  controlled,  bond  or  free? 

"  For  if  she  is  a  mate,  one  must  at  once  trust  more  and 
exact  more;  exacting  toil,  courage,  and  the  hardest,  most  neces- 
sary thing  of  all,  the  clearest,  most  shameless,  explicitness  of  un- 
derstanding. .  .  . 

"  The  social  consciousness  of  women  seems  to  me  an  un- 
worked  and  almost  untouched  mine  of  wealth  for  the  con- 
structive purpose  of  the  world." — From  A  Neiu  Machiavelli — 
H.  G.  WELLS. 

THE  survey  of  the  life  of  the  ordinary  do- 
mestic woman  of  the  past  century  has  brought  us 
to  the  conclusion  that  excessively  feminine  habits 

344 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP    345 

were  the  most  serious  disadvantage  under  which 
women  struggled.  By  implication,  also,  men 
were  as  much  too  "  masculine  "  as  women  were 
too  "  feminine  "  for  the  uses  of  modern  life,  and 
the  gulf  between  them  made  the  adjustments  of 
marriage  unduly  difficult,  besides  reacting  injuri- 
ously upon  the  children.  With  the  definite  de- 
cline of  militarism  and  paternalism  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  new  types  of  do- 
mestic relations  began  to  appear;  but  the  tradi- 
tional habits  characteristic  of  the  earlier  regime 
still  persisted. 

The  restrictive  theory  of  a  female  sphere  or- 
dained by  God  and  controlled  by  men,  culminated 
in  America  about  the  time  of  the  Civil  War,  and 
was  afterward  rapidly  broken  down  by  vast 
changes  in  industry  and  in  religious  thought,  and 
by  the  applications  of  science  to  common  life 
which  have  taken  place  since  then.  Yet  even 
now  the  conventional  behavior  associated  with 
hyper-femininity  and  hyper-masculinity  is  still  af- 
fected or  unconsciously  imitated  in  childhood, 
and  is  deemed  essential — at  least  in  women — to 
respectability.  Evidently,  so  long  as  the  stand- 
ards of  religion  and  conduct  devised  by  men  con- 
tinue to  be  revised  largely  by  them,  progress 
toward  a  common  human — as  distinguished  from 
a  bi-sexual — basis  of  morals  will  be  slow. 


346   LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

No  thoughtful  person  will  deny  that  the  aver- 
age man  needs  refining  and  moralizing,  nor  that 
the  ordinary  woman  is  lacking  in  strength  and 
largeness  of  mind;  yet  the  vestigia  of  old  social 
ideas  remain  to  make  girls  more  foolishly  girlish 
and  boys  more  brutally  boyish  from  their  child- 
hood up.  Though  we  know  that  half  the  misery 
of  modern  life  comes  from  living  in  daily  in- 
tensity, from  sex-suggestion  and  indulgence,  there 
is  yet  very  little  intelligent  attempt  to  abate  it, 
except  by  the  negative  process  of  suppression. 
There  is  certainly  nothing  which  the  world  needs 
less  at  the  present  moment  than  emphasis  on  sex 
and  sex  differences,  nor  more  than  preparation 
for  family  duties. 

Although  co-education  has  now  been  estab- 
lished in  schools  and  colleges  for  more  than  a 
generation,  it  is  still  regarded  by  most  people  as 
a  matter  of  convenience  and  economy,  rather  than 
as  an  effective  and  rational  opportunity  for  pre- 
paring the  young  for  family  life.  The  entrance 
of  young  women  into  industry  is  deprecated  as 
diverting  them  from  marriage  and  motherhood, 
rather  than  accepted — as  it  should  be — as  one  of 
the  suitable  means  for  marriageable  young  peo- 
ple to  become  acquainted  with  each  other  on  a 
self-respecting  basis  of  business  association.  Al- 
though low  wages,  excessive  hours  of  labor,  and 
unsanitary  conditions  threaten  every  young  per- 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP  347 

son  in  industry,  let  us  not  forget  that  the  girls 
of  two  or  three  generations  ago  were  physically 
even  less  fit  to  be  mothers  than  many  modern 
workers,  in  spite  of  the  protection  of  a  home.  If 
the  health  of  girls  is  menaced  by  the  inhuman  ex- 
actions of  many  occupations,  it  obviously  points 
to  the  alleviation  of  working  conditions  rather 
than  to  a  denial  of  the  right  of  economic  inde- 
pendence. 

The  problems  precipitated  by  the  escape  of 
women  from  the  purely  domestic  sphere  are,  in- 
deed, not  capable  of  immediate  solution;  but  they 
are  relatively  easy  as  compared  to  keeping  them 
within  it.  It  would  be  too  bold,  perhaps,  to  say 
that  one  of  the  best  remedies  for  domestic  in- 
felicity is  the  feminization  of  men  and  the  mas- 
culinization  of  women;  but  if  men  could  be  do- 
mesticated just  a  little  more,  and  if  women  could 
be  persuaded  to  be  a  little  less  feminine  in  their 
habits  and  more  masculine  in  their  minds,  mar- 
riage would  be  more  practicable  and  the  family 
life  somewhat  nearer  the  ideal. 

There  is  some  alarm  nowadays  about  the 
"  feminization  "  of  the  schools  by  women  teach- 
ers, but  very  little,  apparently,  about  the  "  fem- 
inization "  of  the  family  through  the  inattention 
of  men  to  their  family  duties.  Yet,  in  practice, 
the  ordinary  father — an  artisan,  a  clerk,  or  a 
business  man — does  very  little  fathering  beyond 


348   LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

providing  support  and  playing  with  the  children 
a  little,  nights  and  Sundays.  The  constructive 
work  of  bringing  up  the  family  is  left  largely  to 
mothers,  whose  education  and  experience  are  very 
limited.  As  the  hours  of  the  working-day  de- 
crease, and  as  transportation  facilities  make  it 
possible  for  men  to  be  more  at  home,  it  should  be 
possible  to  revive  in  a  better  form  the  coopera- 
tive family,  somewhat  after  the  old-fashioned 
rural  type.  Parents  and  children  may  come  to 
share  not  only  the  proceeds  of  their  joint  labors, 
but  educational  opportunities  and  pleasures  as 
well. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful  signs  of  our  times 
that  a  certain  class  of  men — though  only  a  small 
and  selected  class — take  it  for  granted  that  their 
paternal  duties  are  as  important  as  their  business. 
In  every  community,  and  particularly  in  college 
towns,  there  are  a  good  many  young  husbands 
who  spend  at  least  a  part  of  their  leisure  in  baby- 
tending,  in  dishwashing,  and  the  heavier  kinds  of 
household  labor.  They  do  these  things  in  order 
that  their  wives  may  escape  the  confinement  and 
monotony  of  domesticity  for  a  part  of  each  day; 
they  even  help  that  their  wives  may  have  time 
for  culture  clubs  and  social  reforms.  There  are 
families  where  the  husband  and  wife  divide  the 
household  labors  between  them,  and  both  go 
out  to  work  every  day  to  earn  and  to  share  the 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP  349 

common  income.  In  one  family,  the  educated 
wife,  after  having  borne  several  children,  left 
them  when  they  were  out  of  babyhood  to  a  rela- 
tive of  highly  domestic  traits,  and  herself  ac- 
cepted a  salaried  position.  So  far  from  disrupt- 
ing the  family,  this  unconventional  procedure  has 
made  fine  men  of  these  boys,  men  who  have  a 
strong  attachment  to  their  home  and  their  par- 
ents, and  who  are  peculiarly  considerate  toward 
their  young  wives.  This  wife  was  maternal,  but 
not  domestic;  but  so  reasonable  an  arrangement 
would  not  have  been  possible,  had  not  the  hus- 
band possessed  highly  paternal  qualities,  and  been 
willing  to  take  his  full  share  in  bringing  up  the 
family. 

There  are,  in  truth,  a  thousand  different  ad- 
justments of  maternal  and  paternal  relations,  and 
as  many  redivisions  of  domestic  labor  and  family 
finance.  Perhaps  the  happiest  as  well  as  the 
most  uniformly  competent  family  of  my  ac- 
quaintance consists  of  ten  persons.  The  parents, 
both  graduates  of  a  good  small  college  in  the 
Middle  West,  came  to  California  for  the  hus- 
band's health,  and  the  wife  for  a  time,  and  in 
addition  to  child-bearing,  chiefly  supported  the 
family.  They  have  always  lived  simply  and  on 
the  principle  of  all  members  of  the  family,  re- 
gardless of  age  and  sex,  sharing  all  there  was — 
whether  of  labor,  drudgery,  domestic  care,  pleas- 


350  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

ure,  or  money.  When  the  family  grew  too  large 
for  the  mother  and  the  elder  children  to  do  all  the 
work,  they  brought  in  a  young  girl  from  the 
Indian  reservation  near  by,  who  is  now,  at  middle- 
age,  almost  as  intelligent  and  as  much  a  member 
of  the  family  as  the  adopted  daughter.  For,  in 
addition  to  raising  six  children  of  their  own, 
these  warm-hearted  people  adopted  another  who 
needed  a  home. 

The  children,  one  by  one,  have  gone  to  college, 
partly  earning  their  own  way;  and  the  older  ones, 
as  they  got  into  the  world,  helping  the  younger. 
Now  the  parents,  at  their  prime  of  life,  occupy 
jointly  a  conspicuous  public  position.  The  eldest 
daughter,  who  is  of  a  maternal  disposition,  runs 
the  house  and  looks  after  her  younger  brothers 
and  sisters,  and  is  compensated  therefor  by  her 
parents.  It  is,  indeed,  a  very  plain  establishment, 
but  altogether  sanitary  and  comfortable.  Every 
person  in  it  is  well  fed,  well  clothed,  industrious; 
and  nobody  is  drudging  to  give  other  members  of 
the  family  something  they  have  not  earned  and 
do  not  need.  Every  member  of  the  household 
is  useful,  happy,  and  loyal  to  the  rest;  and, 
unitedly,  they  make  sacrifices  in  order  to  con- 
tribute service  to  the  public  welfare.  Their  hos- 
pitality is  proverbial,  and  seldom  do  their  guests 
hear  elsewhere  more  interesting  conversation 
than  in  this  jolly,  cooperative  family. 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP    351 

This  might  be  called  the  ideal  American  fam- 
ily, yet  the  parents  were  not  exceptional,  perhaps, 
except  in  their  sincere  and  simple  insistence  upon 
the  principle  of  family  unity,  regardless  of  the 
sex,  age,  and  condition  of  servitude  of  its  mem- 
bers. Consider  the  difference  in  the  results  if 
the  women  had  all  stayed  at  home  keeping  a  con- 
ventionally elaborate  house;  pinching  their  pin- 
money  to  be  well-dressed,  and  hanging  like  dead- 
weight on  the  males  of  the  family.  Suppose  the 
daughters,  instead  of  working  their  way  through 
college  with  some  help  at  home,  had  attained  a 
merely  superficial  education,  and  contributed 
nothing  to  society  but  "  good  looks  "  until  they 
were  married!  As  it  is,  there  are  ten  persons, 
eight  of  whom  are  already  self-supporting  and 
well-educated,  while  the  two  younger  ones  give 
promise  of  meeting  the  family  standard.  All  of 
them  have  had  a  larger  life,  all  of  them  are  bet- 
ter citizens  than  under  the  old  system  of  sex- 
spheres  and  sex-duty;  and  even  the  head  of  the 
family  has  had  an  easier  time — not  to  count  in 
the  spiritual  compensations  of  profound  family 
affection  and  the  close  comradeship  of  the  hus- 
band and  wife. 

Still  another  significant  tendency  of  our  time  is 
the  emergence  of  a  considerable  class  of  men 
whose  personal  ideals  are  neither  patriarchal  nor 
military.  In  America,  at  any  rate,  the  fighting 


352  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

man — the  bully,  the  pugilist,  the  war  hero,  the 
fire-eater,  the  tyrannical  husband  and  father,  the 
man  who  expects  to  be  waited  upon  by  all  women 
— holds  a  much  less  honorable  place  than  in 
Europe.  The  predatory  and  the  parasitic — 
whether  men  or  women — are  slowly  being  dis- 
credited. There  is  a  reclassification  going  on 
which  tends  somewhat  towards  that  among  the 
Chinese,  who  rate  people  in  the  order  of  their 
contribution  to  society:  scholars,  producers, 
merchants,  soldiers,  et  cetera.  The  humani- 
tarians, once  so  exceptional,  are  a  growing  class 
of  men  of  personal  cleanliness,  abstemious  habits, 
fond  of  family  life,  and  interested  in  political 
and  social  reforms,  and  by  no  means  physically 
effeminate.  They  are,  rather,  men  of  a  refined 
but  powerfully  muscled  athletic  type,  whose  fight- 
ing instincts  find  expression  in  the  protection  of 
the  weak  by  the  exercise  of  their  higher  mental 
shrewdness.  These  are  the  attorneys  who  fight 
for  poor  clients  and  for  just  but  unpopular 
causes;  politicians  who  wade  into  the  muck  of 
partizanship,  not  for  personal  gain,  but  for  the 
joy  of  cleaning  things  up  and  making  a  better 
world  to  live  in;  employers  who  try  industrial 
experiments  for  the  solution  of  labor  disputes, 
and  the  lessening  of  unnecessary  drudgery;  doc- 
tors who  give  as  much  time  to  unpaid  preventive 
work  as  to  building  up  a  lucrative  practice;  men 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP    353 

whose  religion  takes  the  form  of  settlement  club 
work  for  boys,  or  probation  and  prison  reform; 
and  many  others  to  whom  some  form  of  social 
service  is  as  necessary  as  the  fulfilment  of  their 
worldly  ambition. 

The  relation  of  these  new  kinds  of  men  to  this 
discussion  lies  in  the  fact  that  these  are  the  men 
who  want  wives  as  companions  rather  than  do- 
mestic subordinates;  who  call  in  women  to  help 
them  solve  social  problems;  who  join  hands  with 
them  in  their  efforts  to  obtain  the  guardianship  of 
their  children,  the  control  of  their  persons,  prop- 
erty, and  earnings;  to  protect  young  girls  and 
boys;  and  even,  and  last,  to  help  them  secure 
equal  political  rights.  Unquestionably  there  is 
an  increasing  number  of  thoughtful  men  to  whom 
the  acceleration  of  progress  seems  to  depend 
largely  on  the  emancipation  of  women  from  pet- 
tiness, ignorance,  idleness,  and  social  pauperiza- 
tion. At  one  end  of  our  social  scale  there  is  a 
great  body  of  idle,  dissolute  men;  at  the  other,  a 
group  of  selfish,  luxuriously  clothed,  and  econom- 
ically dependent  women.  The  men  flock  into  the 
cities  and  hang  about  the  "slum"  districts;  the 
women  parade  the  fashionable  quarters,  exhibit- 
ing themselves  and  their  finery.  The  imagina- 
tion can  hardly  compass  what  would  happen  if 
such  men  stopped  drinking,  and  such  women 
stopped  talking  about  clothes,  and  all  of  them 


354   LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

went  to  work  at  some  really  useful  occupa- 
tion. 

Too  often  the  arguments  for  the  social  libera- 
tion and  political  enfranchisement  of  women  are 
based  merely  on  what  might  happen  if  they  were 
achieved.  There  is  scarcely  anything  which  was 
said  in  favor  of  the  enfranchisement  of  the  com- 
mon man  a  century  ago;  or  of  the  negro  and  the 
foreigner  in  more  recent  times,  which  does  not 
now  apply  equally  to  women.  But,  aside  from 
the  justice  of  it — an  unanswerable  argument  in 
our  day — and  without  regard  to  the  specious  cry 
of  expediency,  and  omitting  all  prophecy,  women 
need  and  must  have  a  larger  life.  Even  when 
motherhood  shall  have  become,  for  all  except  the 
most  ignorant,  a  high  and  chosen  vocation;  and 
even  with  every  scientific  assistance  in  the  house- 
hold, the  life  of  the  exclusively  domestic  woman 
will  still  be  too  narrow.  Although  during  the 
earlier  years  of  child-bearing  the  life  of  a  mother 
is  necessarily  confining,  there  remains  to  the 
average  woman  from  a  third  to  a  quarter  of  her 
whole  adult  life  in  which  these  primary  duties 
occupy  relatively  very  little  time,  and  when,  there- 
fore, she  might  be  a  producer,  or  of  public 
service. 

It  is  customary  for  many  conservative  persons 
who  are  willing  to  grant  so  much  as  this,  to  point 
out  the  unpaid  honorary  services  in  philanthropy 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP   355 

and  charity  in  which  women  may  now  properly 
engage,  and  to  which  they  think  it  wise  to  limit 
them.  Let  it  be  remembered  that  all  philan- 
thropy was  once  the  province  of  the  great  lady, 
the  priest,  and  the  religious  orders  who  received 
no  pay,  but  it  was  not  the  more  efficiently  done 
on  that  account.  Consecration  may  reduce  the 
selfishness  of  the  charitable,  but  it  does  not  elim- 
inate the  human  instinct  to  do  that  which  brings 
compensation  better  than  that  which  does  not. 
The  most  faithful  wifehood  and  motherhood  on 
the  part  of  members  of  a  woman's  board  do 
not  necessarily  prepare  them  to  solve  the  busi- 
ness of  charitable  institutions  and  societies,  nor 
to  comprehend  and  prevent  the  causes  of  poverty 
and  family  desertion,  of  sickness  and  unemploy- 
ment. The  merely  palliative,  hand-to-mouth 
methods  of  the  charities  of  past  generations  were, 
in  a  measure,  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were  car- 
ried on  chiefly  by  clergymen  and  domestic  women. 
The  gulf  between  the  old-time,  classically  trained 
minister,  and  the  modern  clergyman,  whose 
preaching  and  praying  are  only  a  part  of  many 
social  and  civic  duties,  is  no  greater  than  that 
between  the  old-time  charitable  lady  and  the 
trained  charity  worker  of  our  day. 

Nor  are  the  men  chosen  for  honorary  service 
boards  those  living  at  leisure,  devoting  their 
time  to  clubs,  personal  culture,  amusement, 


356    LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

travel,  society;  but  almost  invariably  those  who 
have  made  a  conspicuous  success  in  some  other 
field,  and  who,  at  the  same  time,  are  willing  to 
give  their  scant  leisure  for  the  public  welfare. 
The  accepted  measure  of  economic  usefulness  is 
money;  and  the  public  justly  values  honorary  pub- 
lic service  at  what  the  giver  would  be  valued  at 
in  his  industrial  capacity.  Many  women  of  small 
earning  capacity  are  performing  the  honorary 
services  for  their  husband,  and  are  measured 
rather  by  the  status  of  the  man  who  supports 
them  than  by  anything  they  have  done  them- 
selves. But  more  and  more  the  services  of 
women,  whether  to  the  individual  household  or  to 
industry,  or  to  the  public  welfare,  must  be  reck- 
oned in  terms  of  money  before  they  will  be 
thoroughly  respected  either  by  men  or  by  other 
women. 

Women  are  demanding  in  their  own  leaders 
intelligence  and  competence  rather  than  wealth 
and  social  position,  and  are  beginning  to  be  will- 
ing to  pay  for  them.  The  charity  organizations 
are  officered  largely  by  trained  and  salaried 
women  secretaries,  and  supported  by  wealthy  men 
and  women,  who  recognize  their  superiority  over 
volunteer  workers.  The  woman  suffrage  move- 
ment illustrates  the  appreciation  which  domestic 
women  and  women  of  leisure  have  of  the  abil- 
ities of  others  who  have  held  a  place  in  the  wage- 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP   357 

earning  world.  The  campaign  of  political  edu- 
cation, financed  by  women  of  wealth,  is  carried  on 
almost  wholly  by  speakers,  writers,  and  or- 
ganizers who  have  established  their  social  value 
in  competition  with  men. 

The  financial  measure  of  human  ability  may 
not  be  the  ideal  one,  but  it  is  a  necessary  stage 
before  a  higher  one  can  be  applied.  The  woman 
who  has  earned  a  salary  of  a  hundred  a  month 
before  her  marriage,  can  accept  support  with  self- 
respect  only  if  she  does  a  hundred  dollars'  worth 
of  necessary  labor  afterward;  or  contributes  a 
child  to  society  of  a  quality  which  justifies 
her  temporary  release  from  labor.  She  can  no 
longer  shilly-shally  with  her  conscience  by  assum- 
ing that,  in  managing  servants,  paying  calls,  dress- 
ing herself  becomingly,  and  making  herself  a 
charming  wife  and  hostess,  she  is  fulfilling  all 
that  society  has  a  right  to  expect  of  her — even  if 
her  husband  be  satisfied.  The  efficiency  test 
alone  is  rapidly  discrediting  a  class  of  personally 
lovely  women  who  spend  their  lives  in  consuming 
rather  than  in  producing;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  setting  a  higher  valuation  on  competent 
mothers  and  on  women  workers. 

From  another  aspect,  the  entrance  of  young 
women  into  the  economic  world  has  an  important 
relation  to  marital  happiness.  Until  girls  have 
as  good  an  education  and  are  as  capable  of  self- 


358    LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

support  as  young  men,  it  will  continue  to  be  as- 
sumed that  a  suitor  does  his  fiancee  a  favor  in 
marrying  her  and  relieving  her  of  the  necessity  of 
proving  herself  in  serious  competition.  The 
man  who  marries  a  woman  who  has  already 
proved  herself  in  work  as  exacting  as  his  own, 
does  not  regard  her  as  "  a  weaker  vessel,"  but 
instinctively  respects  her  competence  and  her 
opinions  as  he  would  those  of  another  man.  Both 
she  and  her  children  rise  in  value  in  his  eyes,  by 
so  much  as  he  is  compelled  to  recognize  the  pain, 
the  peril,  the  limitation  of  life,  and  the  incessant 
labor  which  good  mothering  involves. 

Jane  Addams,  in  her  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace, 
points  out  how  women's  lives  have  been  restricted 
by  the  arbitrary  assumption  that  their  contribu- 
tion to  society  must  be  made  solely  through  chil- 
dren and  the  home : 

"  From  the  beginning  of  tribal  life  women  have  been 
held  responsible  for  the  health  of  the  community,  a  func- 
tion which  is  now  represented  by  the  health  department ; 
from  the  days  of  the  cave  dwellers,  so  far  as  the  home 
was  clean  and  wholesome  it  was  due  to  their  efforts,  which 
are  now  represented  by  the  bureau  of  tenement  house  in- 
spection ;  from  the  period  of  the  primitive  village,  the  only 
public  sweeping  performed  was  what  they  undertook  in 
their  own  dooryards,  that  which  is  now  represented  by  the 
bureau  of  street  cleaning.  Most  of  the  departments  in  a 
modern  city  can  be  traced  to  woman's  traditional  activ- 
ity, but,  in  spite  of  this,  so  soon  as  these  old  affairs  were 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP   359 

turned  over  to  the  care  of  the  city,  they  slipped  from 
women's  hands,  apparently  because  they  became  matters 
for  collective  action,  and  implied  the  use  of  the  fran- 
chise." 

Miss  Addams  shows,  further,  that  these  outside 
occupations  develop  in  the  immigrant  workers 
"  an  unusual  mental  alertness  and  power  of  per- 
ception "  which  results  in  their  breaking  through 
custom  and  habit,  and  in  their  acquiring  the 
power  of  association. 

These  are  qualities  which  women  as  well  as 
immigrants  need,  and  the  domestic  woman  must 
somehow  be  brought  in  touch  with  a  larger  life 
—for  her  own  sake  to  liberate  her  from  conven- 
tional pettiness;  for  the  children's  sake  that  she 
may  be  their  intelligent  guide;  and  for  her  hus- 
band's sake,  to  relieve  the  marital  tension  which 
inevitably  rises  between  a  man  and  woman  so  far 
apart  as  the  conventional  married  pair.  Be- 
cause of  the  intensely  personal  view  which  the 
wifely  and  maternal  life  engenders,  women  are 
emotionally  exacting  and  expect  of  matrimony 
satisfactions  which  only  a  connection  with  out- 
side realities  can  give.  Their  problem  is,  then, 
how  to  widen  their  view,  how  to  keep  abreast 
with  the  great  currents  in  which  men  are  caught 
by  their  very  occupations,  and  yet  how  to  re- 
main the  center  and  the  mistress  of  the  home  and 
family. 


One  solution  is  already  suggested  in  the  fact 
that  girls  now  generally  remain  at  school  longer 
than  boys.  There  can  be  no  question  that  the 
woman  who  is  to  marry  and,  by  her  motherhood 
cares,  to  be  sequestered  for  a  period  of  her  life, 
needs  a  better  education — a  sort  of  anticipatory 
fund  of  resources,  as  it  were — than  the  man 
whose  daily  contact  with  the  business  world  is  a 
continuous  education  in  itself.  The  earlier  years 
of  motherhood  develop  the  emotions  to  the 
neglect  of  the  mind;  and,  because  they  must  be 
filled  with  a  monotonous  succession  of  petty  and 
imperative  duties,  tend  to  rob  the  woman  of  the 
power  of  systematic  thought.  The  early  mental 
training  of  girls  should  anticipate  this  heavy 
draft,  so  that  the  mother  may  keep  alive  her  mind 
and  soul  in  after  years.  It  is  necessary  not  alone 
for  herself,  but  for  the  children  whose  friend 
and  counselor  she  is  destined  to  be  through  the 
years  when  they  will  question  her  competence 
and  her  authority. 

It  is  curious  that  those  who  are  quite  willing 
to  grant  the  necessity  of  a  broader  education 
and  better  physical  development  for  girls  who  are 
to  marry;  who  acquiesce  in  their  employment  in 
charities  and  the  politer  social  reforms,  balk 
just  at  the  barrier  of  suffrage.  It  is,  no  doubt, 
because  they  are  still  unconsciously  in  thrall  to 
the  rub-off-the-bloom  theory  of  the  past  century. 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP    361 

The  tradition  that  the  essential  qualities  of 
womanhood,  like  the  veneer  which  has  been 
called  "  femininity,"  would  somehow  be  de- 
stroyed by  the  larger  life,  and  particularly  by 
the  exercise  of  political  rights,  is  still  lingering 
in  the  minds  of  a  majority  of  men.  While  they 
are  clinging  to  this  time-worn  apprehension,  the 
field  of  politics  itself  has  come  to  include  nearly 
everything  requiring  collective  action,  and  which 
touches  the  life  of  every  member  of  the  family. 

The  chief  function  of  every  citizen  who  votes, 
as  distinguished  from  the  politician  and  the  office- 
holder, is  now  to  watch,  to  approve  and  disap- 
prove by  the  ballot,  their  use  of  power  and  the 
measures  they  promote.  The  regeneration  of 
democracy  now  going  on  in  this  country,  which 
takes,  on  the  one  hand,  the  form  of  breaking 
down  the  machine,  and,  on  the  other,  the  direct 
appeal  to  the  people,  throws  into  higher  relief  the 
absurdity  of  refusing  to  women  a  share  in  de- 
ciding upon  officers  and  issues  which  concern  them 
quite  as  much  as  any  other  portion  of  the  people. 

Without  reiterating  the  stock  arguments  in 
favor  of  admitting  women  to  suffrage,  it  is  im- 
portant to  note  that  voting  with  the  occasional 
interest  in  political  campaigns  and  large  public 
questions  affords  just  that  connection  with  the 
larger  world  which  the  domestic  woman  needs; 
and  requires  no  more  of  her  energy  than  it  does 


362   LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

of  the  ordinary  male  citizen.  Many  "  strictly 
feminine  "  women  now  spend  more  time  away 
from  home  in  social  teas  and  card  parties,  in 
charities  and  bazars  and  aid  societies,  in  clubs  and 
musicales,  than  would  serve  to  make  them  in- 
telligent voters  and  active  citizens.  They  spend 
their  energy,  moreover,  with  less  compensation, 
since  they  do  not  need  encouragement  in  petti- 
ness, futility,  idleness,  luxury,  nor  even  in  polite 
begging  to  promote  benevolences  of  which  they 
have  no  personal  knowledge.  They  sorely  need 
the  breadth  of  mind  which  the  discussion  of 
impersonal  issues — trusts,  tariff,  and  municipal 
graft,  police,  school,  and  health  measures- 
would  tend  to  produce. 

In  modern  society  the  common  interests  of  the 
family  group  are  all  too  few.  The  man  en- 
grossed in  the  economic  struggle — the  children  in 
school  and  play — the  mother  in  housekeeping,  so- 
cial amenities,  and  benevolence — though  together 
constituting  the  social  unit,  have  slight  mutual 
concern  in  anything  except  the  spending  of  the 
income.  If  politics  are  discussed  at  all,  it  is  by 
the  father  and  son,  while  the  women  give  a  bored 
and  superficial  attention.  But  if  the  women  were 
conscious  of  a  power  in  these  matters,  all  would 
have  a  common  interest  in  being  informed  on 
them,  as  they  already  have  a  common  stake  in 
their  proper  conduct. 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP  363 

What,  then,  do  women  need?  It  must  be  clear 
enough  to  the  open-minded  reader  of  the  preced- 
ing pages  that,  since  the  decline  of  home  manu- 
factures, the  domestic  woman  has  had  less  and 
less  means  of  justifying  her  existence  except 
through  motherhood. 

Under  the  spell  of  the  idea  that  every  woman 
is  a  potential  mother,  whether  married  or  not, 
many  people  overlook  the  fact  that  at  any  par- 
ticular time  there  are  many  hundred  thousands 
of  women  who  are  not  mothers,  and  who  must 
make  their  claim  to  support  by  men  on  the  ground 
of  being  housekeepers.  The  wife  who  is  doing 
the  work  of  the  household  is,  at  any  rate,  earning 
her  board  and  lodging,  often  something  more. 
And,  as  the  number  of  children  in  the  family  is 
likely  to  be  in  proportion  to  poverty  rather  than 
riches,  these  working  women  probably  contribute 
throughout  the  whole  of  their  lives — as  house- 
keepers, mothers,  and  grandmothers — more  than 
the  equivalent  for  all  they  receive;  and  are, 
therefore,  in  a  self-respecting  position. 

But  it  would  be  easy  to  show  that  there  are  sev- 
eral hundred  thousand  women  in  America  whose 
inactivity  or  quasi-domestic  occupation  makes 
them  dissatisfied,  while  at  the  same  time  society 
is  feeding  and  clothing  them.  As  to  the  unmar- 
ried ones,  there  can  be  no  question  that  they 


364  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

ought  either  to  be  preparing  themselves  for  use- 
fulness, or  to  be  giving  something  definite  and 
necessary  to  society.  And  as  to  the  married 
ones,  only  those  who  are  fully  occupied  with  chil- 
dren and  with  really  necessary — not  fictitious — 
household  tasks,  should  be  regarded  as  fulfilling 
their  whole  duty.  Even  mothers  of  children, 
when  the  children  are  grown  up  and  gone,  should 
be  able  to  give  a  portion  of  their  time  in  mature 
and  useful  service  outside  the  home.  In  pro- 
portion as  women  of  all  classes  are  transferred 
from  the  consuming  to  the  recognized  producing 
classes,  they  will  gain  in  self-respect  and  content- 
ment; while  the  world  at  large  will  be  the  richer 
thereby. 

The  first  thing  women  need  is  to  see  clearly 
that  it  is  disreputable  to  trade  wifehood  and 
merely  potential  motherhood  for  the  luxury  of  a 
home  and  the  protection  of  a  husband.  Indeed, 
a  very  considerable  number  of  women  do  realize 
it,  and  are  driven  more  and  more  into  volunteer 
social  service  by  their  discontent  with  a  para- 
sitic existence.  Such  discontent  with  the  semi- 
idle  or  relatively  useless  life  is  highly  creditable 
to  them,  and  the  effort  to  escape  from  the  tradi- 
tion which  surrounds  them  should  be  encouraged 
by  men.  When  women  have  learned  not  to  ex- 
change their  beauty  and  their  sex-function  for 
luxury,  and  when  they  begin  to  try  to  do  some- 


365 

thing  worthy  of  their  human  energies,  then  they 
will  begin  to  rate  their  labor  in  a  truer  perspec- 
tive. Men,  as  a  rule,  work  harder  than  women, 
but  they  are  not  half  so  busy.  A  woman  will  tell 
you  she  has  no  time  to  read — but  is  meantime 
doing  beautiful  and  often  quite  superfluous  needle- 
work in  all  her  spare  moments.  She  has  no  time 
to  keep  up  her  music,  which  she  really  loves,  and 
upon  which  she  spent  so  many  years  of  practice  in 
girlhood,  but  she  will  retrim  her  hats,  remake  her 
dresses,  taking  infinite  trouble  to  propitiate  that 
Juggernaut  of  womenkind — Fashion. 

In  proportion  as  women  go  to  work  at  exacting, 
routine  occupations  outside  the  home,  they  are 
dropping  the  habit  of  futile  busyness;  they  buy 
fewer,  plainer,  more  substantial  clothes,  and  wear 
them  longer.  The  standard  street  dress,  repre- 
sented by  the  separate  waist  and  tailor  suit,  which 
became  the  fashion  for  the  first  time  about  1890, 
is  a  historic  landmark  in  the  life  of  American 
women.  In  spite  of  manufacturers  and  design- 
ers, that  type  of  dress,  corresponding  to  the 
man's  business  suit,  has  remained  the  standard- 
ized dress  of  the  modest  woman. 

This  readjustment  of  values  is  in  itself  mak- 
ing a  wide  differentiation  in  the  varieties  of  do- 
mestic women.  Once  all  domestic  women  had 
the  same  ideas,  and  their  lives  were  spent  in  a 
continuous  effort  to  attain  an  ever  greater  elab- 


366  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

oration  of  clothes  and  housekeeping.  While 
now  there  is  a  larger  and  larger  group  of  women 
who  are  putting  their  housekeeping  under  their 
feet,  so  to  speak — reducing  it  by  appliances, 
short-cut  methods,  elimination,  systematization, 
simplification,  to  a  point  where  it  is  pleasurable 
and  good  exercise,  and  where  it  leaves  them  the 
greater  part  of  their  time  and  energy  for  the 
higher  interests  of  the  home  and  for  intellectual 
comradeship  with  husband  and  children. 

As  soon  as  girls  began  to  go  into  industry,  they 
began  to  learn  anew  the  habits  and  the  joys  of 
thoroughness,  which  had  been  the  characteristics 
of  their  manufacturing  grandmothers.  They  be- 
gan to  test  themselves  by  the  achievements  of 
men  and  to  take  pride  in  meeting  their  busi- 
ness requirements.  But,  as  a  rule,  as  Professor 
Thomas  so  justly  remarks,  women  are  still  to  men 
as  amateurs  to  professionals,  for  they  came  late 
into  the  economic  game.  But  already  the  effect 
upon  their  habits  and  modes  of  thought  is  strik- 
ingly apparent.  To  do  hard  things,  under  trying 
conditions,  and  under  the  supervision  of  men 
upon  whom  the  conventional  tears,  temper,  and 
coquetry  have  no  effect,  either  by  way  of  excuse 
or  increased  wages;  is  a  tremendous  corrective  to 
the  emotionalized  feminine  temperament.  For 
a  pretty  girl  to  discover  that  her  male  employer 


has  no  use  for  her  unless  she  can  spell  and  take 
dictation  correctly,  is  an  education  in  itself.  In- 
stead of  depending  merely  on  her  traditional  sex 
weapons,  she  will  more  and  more  depend  upon 
competence,  and,  in  doing  so,  will  gain  self-con- 
trol and  an  independent  poise. 

The  entrance  of  young  women  into  industry 
is  readjusting  all  the  sex  relations  and  making 
mutual  concealment  between  man  and  woman 
more  difficult.  Two  generations  ago  the  whole 
education  of  a  girl  was  aimed  to  conceal  her  na- 
ture from  herself  as  well  as  to  keep  her  ignorant 
of  the  nature  of  men.  The  old-fashioned  pri- 
vate school  reared  girls  to  a  kind  of  sexlessness, 
with  the  result  that  they  were  morbidly  fear- 
ful and  yet  curious  about  sex  matters.  They 
v/ere  inevitably  oversensitive,  feeling  themselves 
stained,  as  Marholm  says,  "  by  everything 
imaginable — by  the  glances  of  indifferent  men, 
by  their  own  thoughts,  by  physiological  knowl- 
edge." Such  a  state  of  mind  is  not  possible  to 
voung  women  who  meet  men  daily  in  business  re- 
lations. Nor  can  men  much  longer  conceal  from 
the  women  whom  they  meet  in  business  the  un- 
savory facts  of  their  own  social  habits.  Girls 
who,  in  the  seclusion  of  the  home,  might  never 
learn  what  their  suitor's  previous  life  had  been, 
cannot  fail  to  see  men  somewhat  as  they  are, 


368   LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

and  to  exercise  their  judgment  as  never  before. 
The  power  of  selection,  so  long  almost  wholly  in 
the  hands  of  men,  is  gradually  being  transferred 
to  the  potential  mothers  of  the  race. 

But  of  all  the  modifications  which  economic  and 
political  liberation  will  work  in  the  characters  of 
women,  the  most  important  is  the  development 
of  a  social  conscience.  The  women  of  the  past 
century,  having  no  responsibility  for  matters  out- 
side the  home,  and  no  direct  knowledge  of  how 
money  was  made,  accepted  all  they  could  get 
from  their  men-folk  with  a  clear  conscience.  But 
the  woman  who  earns  her  own  living  in  our  day 
— however  pleasantly — sees  young  girls  by  the 
thousands  paid  less  than  a  living  wage,  to  supply 
the  luxuries  of  society  at  a  price  below  the  proper 
cost  of  production;  or  to  furnish  inordinate 
profits  for  men  to  waste  upon  other  and  idle 
women.  The  thoughtful  woman  who  does  vol- 
unteer social  work  begins  to  measure  her  own 
comforts  in  terms  of  others'  need.  Women  are 
thus  acquiring  a  socialized  conscience — they  no 
longer  willingly  buy  sweatshop  lingerie;  or  ac- 
cept unquestioningly  jewels  bought  with  money 
made  in  predatory  businesses.  There  is,  per- 
haps, no  more  touching  and  hopeful  aspect  of  the 
growing  social  conscience  of  women,  than  the 
efforts  of  rich  women  to  square  their  awakened 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP  369 

consciences    by    spending    themselves    and    their 
money  in  the  service  of  mankind. 

Of  the  unmarried  woman,  almost  nothing  has 
been  said  in  these  pages,  although  there  might 
profitably  have  been  inserted  a  chapter  on  "  The 
Superfluous  Woman,"  in  order  to  round  out  the 
discussion  of  the  tyranny  of  tradition.  It  is 
enough  for  our  purpose  to  note  that  she  was  once 
regarded  as  superfluous:  a  poor,  unfortunate,  use- 
less human  creature,  who  had  missed  the  only 
worjthy  vocation  of  woman,  and  for  whom  there 
was  no  suitable  niche  in  the  home  or  the  world. 
In  this  better  time  we  need  not  trouble  ourselves 
very  much  about  her.  She  is  neither  superfluous 
nor  idle,  as  a  rule,  and,  in  spite  of  hampering 
conditions,  is  working  out  her  own  ambitions. 
Though  often  underpaid,  as  compared  with  men 
of  the  same  degree  of  efficiency,  though  handi- 
capped by  her  over-feminized  conscience  and  her 
conventional  habits,  her  future  is  solving  itself 
with  encouraging  rapidity  and  ease.  When  she 
shall  have  caught  up  with  the  game,  and  when 
she  has  acquired  the  same  confidence  in  herself 
that  the  ordinary  man  has,  and  an  equal  oppor- 
tunity to  exercise  her  abilities,  she  will  be — her- 
self! Not  a  masculine  female,  nor  a  defemi- 
nized  anomaly,  but  just  a  competent,  sensible 
woman,  for  whose  service  the  world  already  has 
unlimited  use. 


370  LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP 

What,  then,  do  women  need?  Above  all,  fair 
play  and  freedom  from  interference.  Havelock 
Ellis  has  expressed  the  idea  finely: 

X 

"  We  are  not  at  liberty  to  introduce  any  artificial  bar- 
riers into  sexual  concerns.  The  respective  fitness  of  men 
and  women  for  any  kind  of  work  or  any  kind  of  privilege 
can  only  be  attained  by  actual  experiment;  and  as  the 
conditions  for  such  experiment  are  never  twice  the  same, 
it  can  never  be  positively  affirmed  that  anything  has  been 
settled  once  for  all — .  .  .  .  An  exaggerated  anxiety  lest 
natural  law  be  overthrown  is  misplaced.  The  world  is 
not  so  insecurely  poised." 

It  is  one  of  the  most  astonishing  vagaries  of 
human  thinking  that,  in  spite  of  faith  in  God,  in 
the  face  of  the  demonstrated  power  of  good,  and 
the  progress  of  humanity,  mankind  continues  to 
balk  at  every  change.  The  instinct  of  mother- 
hood is  as  old  as  that  of  procreation,  and  more 
fundamental  to  life;  yet  the  world  is  in  a  state  of 
fright  for  fear  women  will  forsake  their  calling. 
If  the  last  word  has  not  yet  been  said  of  the  Di- 
vine Spirit  or  of  Nature,  why  should  it  be  sup- 
posed that  the  family  relations  are  finally  deter- 
mined, and  the  significance  of  woman  to  life 
wholly  fixed!  Every  liberation  of  women  in  any 
direction  has,  so  far  in  the  world's  history,  tended 
toward  a  higher  civilization;  yet  women  are  still 
heavily  weighted  with  traditions  which  obscure 


LARGER  LIFE  AND  CITIZENSHIP   371 

their  true  nature  and  which  hinder  them  and 
their  children.  Let  every  man  who  has  read 
these  pages  ask  himself  whether  he  is  really  a 
god,  that  he  should  presume  to  set  for  women  the 
limits  of  capacity  and  duty;  and  let  every  woman 
take  courage  to  develop  all  that  is  hidden  within 
her — "  for  we  know  not  what  we  shall  be." 


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